A HISTORY 

OF 

LITERARY CRITICISM 

IN THE RENAISSANCE 



BY 

J. E. SPINGARN 

ADJUNCT PROFESSOR OF COMPARATIVE LITERATURE 
IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 



SECOND EDITION, REVISED 
AND AUGMENTED 




THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 

1908 

All rights reserved 



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APR B 1908 I 

Copji 11*^1 ch^.v 

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COPTEIGHT, 1899, 

By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



First published June, 1899. Second edition, revised, 
March, igo8. 

Italian translation, by Antonio Fusco, 1905. 



Norhjooli ^regs 

J. S. Gushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 

Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION -^ 



Some few years ago, when an Italian translation 
of this work was being prepared for the press, I 
made a thorough revision of the text and incor- 
porated a large mass of additional material. I 
have neither the leisure nor the inclination to under- 
take so complete a revision at the present time, 
and much of the material added in the Italian 
version would scarcely be likely to interest the 
English reader. In this second edition I have 
corrected all specific inaccuracies and misstatements 
which have come to my notice, and I have added a 
new Conclusion of twenty pages which in part 
reproduces an article on "The Origins of Modern 
Criticism " in Modern Philology for April, 1904. 

When this book first appeared, the poet Carducci 
noted with patriotic regret that no one in Italy had 
taken the trouble to read the important body of 
criticism with which this work is concerned. Since 
then the critics and theorists of the Cinquecento 
have been the object of considerable study, in Eng- 
land as well as in Italy; and their significance as 
the real founders of modern criticism is no longer 
open to question. 

J. E. S. 

Columbia University, 
January, 1908. 

iii 



PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION 

This essay undertakes to treat the history of 
literary criticism in the Renaissance. The three 
sections into which the essay is divided are de- 
voted, respectively, to Italian criticism from Dante 
to Tasso, to French criticism from Du Bellay to 
Boileau, and to English criticism from Ascham to 
Milton; but the critical activity of the sixteenth 
century has been the main theme, and the earlier 
or later literature has received treatment only m 
so far as it serves to explain the causes or conse- 
quences of the critical development of this central 
period. It was at this epoch that modern criticism 
began, and that the ancient ideals of art seemed 
once more to sway the minds of men; so that 
the history of sixteenth-century criticism must of 
necessity include a study of the beginnings of 
critical activity in modern Europe and of the grad- 
ual introduction of the Aristotelian canons into 
modern literature. 

This study has been made subservient, more par- 
ticularly, to two specific purposes. While the 
critical activity of the period is important and 
even interesting in itself, it has been here studied 
primarily for the purpose of tracing the origin and 



yi PREFACE 

causes of tlie classic spirit in modern letters and of 
discovering the sources of the rules and theories 
embodied in the neo-classic literature of the seven- 
teenth and eighteenth centuries. How did the 
classic spirit arise ? Whence did it come, and how 
did it develop ? What was the origin of the prin- 
ciples and precepts of neo-classicism ? These are 
some of the questions I have attempted to answer 
in this essay ; and, in answering them, I have tried 
to remember that this is a history, not of critical 
literature, but of literary criticism. For this reason 
I have given to individual books and authors less 
prominence than some of them perhaps deserved, 
and have confined myself almost exclusively to the 
origin of principles, theories, and rules, and to the 
general temper of classicism. Eor a similar reason 
I have been obliged to say little or nothing of 
the methods and results of applied, or concrete, 
criticism. 

This, then, has been the main design of the essay ; 
but furthermore, as is indicated in the title, I have 
attempted to point out the part played by Italy in 
the growth of this neo-classic spirit and in the for- 
mulation of these neo-classic principles. The influ- 
ence of the Italian Eenaissance in the development 
of modern science, philosophy, art, and creative 
literature has been for a long time the subject of 
much study. It has been my more modest task to 
trace the indebtedness of the modern world to Italy 
in the domain of literary criticism ; and I trust that 
I have shown the Eenaissance influence to be as 
great in this as in the other realms of study. The 



PREFACE Vii 

birth of modern criticism was due to the critical 
activity of Italian humanism ; and it is in sixteenth- 
century Italy that we shall find, more or less 
matured, the general spirit and even the specific 
principles of French classicism. The second half 
'of the design, then, is the history of the Italian 
^influence in literary criticism ; and with Milton, the 
/last of the humanists in England, the essay natu- 
[ rally closes. But we shall find, I think, that the 
influence of the Italian Renaissance in the domain 
of literary criticism was not even then all de- 
cayed, and that Lessing and Shelley, to mention no 
others, were the legitimate inheritors of the Italian 
tradition. 

The bibliography at the end of the essay in- 
dicates sufficiently my obligations to preceding 
writers. It has been prepared chiefly for the 
purpose of facilitating reference to works cited in 
the text and in the foot-notes, and should be con- 
sulted for the full titles of books therein men- 
tioned; it makes no pretence of being a complete 
bibliography of the subject. It will be seen that 
the history of Italian criticism in the sixteenth 
century has received scarcely any attention from 
modern scholars. The most complete lists of the 
critical works of the Eenaissance are to be found 
in Crescimbeni's Istoria della Volgar Poesia (Rome, 
1698) and in Blankenburg's Litterarische Zusdtze 
zu Sulzer's Allgemeiner Theorie der schonen Kiinste 
(Leipzig, 1796-98). In regard to Aristotle's Poetics^ 
I have used the text, and in general followed the 
interpretation, given in Professor S. H. Butcher's 



.-' 



vill PKEFACE 

Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art, a noble 
monument of scholarship vivified by literary feel- 
ing. I desire also to express my obligations to 
Professor Butcher for an abstract of Zabarella, to 
Mr. P. 0. Skinner of Harvard for an analysis 
of Capriano, to my friend, Mr. P. W. Chandler, 
for summaries of several early English rhetorical 
treatises, and to Professor Cavalier Speranza for a 
few corrections ; also to my friends, Mr. J. G. Un- 
/ derhill, Mr. Lewis Einstein, and Mr. H. A. Uter- 
/ hart, and to my brother, Mr. A. B. Spingarn, for 
[ incidental assistance of some importance. 

But, above all, I desire to acknowledge my indebt- 
edness to Professor George E. Woodberry. This 
book is the fruit of his instruction ; and in writing 
it, also, I have had recourse to him for assistance 
and criticism. Without the aid so kindly accorded 
by him, the book could hardly have been written, 
and certainly would never have assumed its pres- 
ent form. But my obligations to him are not lim- 
ited to the subject or contents of the present essay. 
Through, a period of five years the inspiration 
derived from his instruction and encouragement 
has been so great as to preclude the possibility of 
its expression in a preface. Quare habe tihi quid- 
quid hoc lihelli. 

New York, 
March. 1899. 



CONTENTS 

PAET FIEST 
LITERARY CRITICISM IN ITALY 

PAGS 

I. The Fundamental Problem or Kenaissancb 

Criticism 3 

i. Mediaeval Conceptions of Poetry, 
ii. The Moral Justification of Poetry, 
iii. The Pinal Justification of Poetry. 

II. The General Theory of Poetry in the 

Italian Renaissance 24 

i. Poetry as a Porm of Scholastic Philosophy. 
J L Po etry as an Imitation of Life, 
iii. The Function of Poetry. 

III. The Theory of the Drama .... 60 

i. The Subject of Tragedy. 

ii. The Function of Tragedy, 

iii. The Characters of Tragedy, 

iv. The Dramatic Unities. 

V. Comedy. 

IV. The Theory of Epic Poetry .... 107 

i. The Theory of the Epic Poem. 
ii. Epic and Romance. 

V. The Growth op the Classic Spirit in Italian 

Criticism 125 

i. Humanism, 
ii. . Vristotelianism. 
iii. Rationalism. 

ix 



X CONTENTS 

PAGK 

VI. Romantic Elements in Italian Criticism . 166 
i. The Ancient Romantic Element, 
ii. Mediaeval Elements, 
iii. Modern Elements. 



PAET SECOND 

LITERARY CRITICISM IN FRANCE 

I. The Character and Development of French 

Criticism in the Sixteenth Century , 171 
i. Character, 
ii. Development. 

II. The Theory of Poetry in the French 

Renaissance 190 

1. The Poetic Art. 
ii. The Drama, 
iii. Heroic Poetry. 

III. Classic and Romantic Elements in French 

Criticism during the Sixteenth Century 214 
i. Classical Elements, 
ii. Romantic Elements. 

IV. The Formation of the Classic Ideal in the 

Seventeenth Century .... 232 

i. The Romantic Revolt. 

ii. The Reaction against the Pl^iade. 
iii. The Second Influx of Italian Ideas, 
iv. The Influence of Rationalistic Philosophy. 



CONTENTS xi 

PAET THIRD 
LITERARY CRITICISM IN ENGLAND 

PASS 

I. The Evolution of English Criticism from 

AscHAM TO Milton 253 

II. The General Theory of Poetry in the 

Elizabethan Age 261 

III. The Theory of Dramatic and Heroic Poetry 282 

i. Tragedy. 

ii. Comedy. 

iii. The Dramatic Unities, 

iv. Epic Poetry. 

IV. Classical Elements in Elizabethan Criticism 296 

i. Introductory : Komantic Elements, 
ii. Classical Metres. 
iii. Other Evidences of Classicism. 

Conclusion 311 

Appendices 332 

A. Chronological Table of the Chief Critical 

Works of the Sixteenth Century. 

B. Salviati's Account of the Commentators on 

Aristotle's Poetics. 

Bibliography . . . ... . , . 337 

Index 345 



Part First 

LITERARY CRITICISM IN ITALl 



LITERARY CRITICISM IN ITALY 



CHAPTER I 

THE FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM OF RENAISSANCE 
CRITICISM 

The first problem of Eenaissance criticism was 
tlie justification of imaginative literature. The ex- 
istence and continuity of the aesthetic consciousness, 
and perhaps, in a less degree, of the critical faculty, 
throughout the Middle Ages, can hardly be denied ; 
yet distrust of literature was keenest among the very 
class of men in whom the critical faculty might be 
presupposed, and it was as the handmaid of philoso- 
phy, and most of all as the vassal of theology, that 
poetry was chiefly valued. In other words, the 
criteria by which imaginative literature was judged 
during the Middle Ages were not literary criteria. 
Poetry was disregarded or contemned, or was valued 
if at all for virtues that least belong to it. The 
Renaissance was thus confronted with the necessity 
of justifying its appreciation of the vast body of 
literature which the Revival of Learning had recov- 
ered for the modern world; and the function of 
Renaissance criticism was to reestablish the aesthetic 
foundations of literature, to reaffirm the eternal 

3 



4 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

lesson of Hellenic culture, and to restore once and 
for all the element of beauty to its rightful place in 
human life and in the world of art. 



I. Mediceval Conceptions of Poetry 

The mediaeval distrust of literature was the result 
of several cooperating causes. Popular literature 
had fallen into decay, and in its contemporary form 
was beneath serious consideration. Classical liter- 
ature was unfortunately pagan, and was moreover 
but imperfectly known. The mediaeval Church 
from its earliest stages had regarded pagan culture 
with suspicion, and had come to look upon the de- 
velopment of popular literature as antagonistic to 
its own supremacy. But beyond this, the distrust 
of literature went deeper, and was grounded upon 
certain theoretical and fundamental objections to all 
the works of the imagination. 

These theoretical objections were in nowise new 
to the Middle Ages. They had been stated in antiq- 
uity with much more directness and philosophical 
efiB.cacy than was possible in the mediaeval period. 
Plato had tried imaginative literature by the cri- 
teria of reality and morality, both of which are 
unaesthetic criteria, although fundamentally appli- 
cable to poetry. In respect to reality, he had shown 
that poetry is three removes from the truth, being 
but the imitation, by the artist, of the imitation, in 
life, of an idea in the mind of G-od. In respect to 
morality, he had discovered in Homer, the greatest 



I.] THE FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM 5 

of poetSj deviations from truth, blasphemy against 
the gods, and obscenity of various sorts. Further- 
more, he had found that creative literature excites 
the emotions more than does actual life, and stirs 
up ignoble passions which were better restrained.;.;. 

These ideas ran throughout the Middle Ages, 
and indeed persisted even beyond the Renaissance. 
Poetry was judged by these same criteria, but it 
was natural that mediaeval writers should substitute 
more practical reasons for the metaphysical argu- 
ments of Plato. According to the criterion of 
reality, it was urged that poetry in its very essence 
^ untrue, that at bottom it is fiction, and therefore 
false. Thus Tertullian said that "the Author of 
truth hates all the false ; He regards as adultery all 
that is unreal. . . . He never will approve pre- 
tended loves, and wraths, and groans, and tears ; " ^ 
and he affirmed that in place of these pagan works 
there was in the Bible and the Fathers, a vast 
body of Christian literature and that this is "not 
fabulous, but true, not tricks of art, but plain reali- 
ties."^ According to the criterion of morality, it 
was urged that as few works of the imagination 
were entirely free from obscenity and blasphemy, 
such blemishes are inseparable from the poetic 
art; and accordingly, Isidore of Seville says that 
a Christian is forbidden to read the figments of the 
poets, "quia per oblectamenta inanium fabularum 
mentem excitant ad incentiva libidinum." ^ 

The third, or psychological objection, made byf 
Plato, was similarly emphasized. Thus Tertullian 
1 De Spectac. xxiii. 2 ii)id. xxii. 3 Bifferentix, iii. 13, 1. 



6 LITERAKY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

pointed out that while God has enjoined us to deal 
calmly and gently and quietly with the Holy Spirit, 
literature, and especially dramatic literature, leads 
to spiritual agitation.^ This point seemed to the 
mediaeval mind fundamental, for in real beauty, 
as Thomas Aquinas insisted, desire is quieted.^ 
Furthermore, it was shown that the only body of 
literary work worthy of serious study dealt with 
pagan divinities and with religious practices which 
were in direct antagonism to Christianity. Other 
objections, also, were incidentally alluded to by 
mediaeval writers. For example, it was said, the 
supreme question in all matters of life is the ques- 
tion of conduct, and it was not apparent in what 
manner poetry conduces to action. Poetry has no 
practical use ; it rather enervates men than urges 
them to the call of duty ; and above all, there are 
more profitable occupations in which the righteous 
man may be engaged. 

These objections to literature are not character- 
istically mediaeval. They have sprung up in every 
period of the world's history, and especially recur 
in all ages in which ascetic or theological conceptions 
of life are dominant. They were stock questions 
of the Greek schools, and there are extant treatises 
by Maximus of Tyre and others on the problem 
whether or not Plato was justified in expelling 
Homer from his ideal commonwealth. The same 
objections prevailed beyond the Eenaissance; and 
they were urged in Italy by Savonarola, in Ger- 

1 De Spectac. xv. Cf. Cyprian, Epist. ad Donat. viii. 
a Cf. Bosanquet, Hist, of Esthetic, p. 148. 



I.] THE FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM 7 

many by Cornelius Agrippa, in England by Gosson 
and Prynne, and in France by Bossuet and other 
ecclesiastics. 



II. The Moral Justification of Poetry 

The allegorical method of interpreting literature / 
was the result of the mediaeval attempt to answer | 
the objections just stated. This method owed its 
origin to the mode of interpreting the popular 
mythology first employed by the Sophists and 
more thoroughly by the later Stoics. Such heroes 
as Hercules and Theseus, instead of being mere 
brute conquerors of monsters and giants, were re- 
garded by the Stoic philosophers as symbols of the 
early sages who had combated the vices and pas- 
sions of mankind, and they became in the course of 
time types of pagan saints. The same mode of in- 
terpretation was later applied to the stories of the 
Old Testament by Philo Judaeus, and was first 
introduced into Occidental Europe by Hilary of 
Poitiers and Ambrose, Bishop of Milan.^ Abra- 
ham, Adam, Eve, Jacob, became types of various 
virtues, and the biblical stories were considered as 
symbolical of the various moral struggles in the 
soul of man. The first instance of the systematic 
application of- the method to the pagan myths 
occurs in the Mythologicon of Eulgentius, who prob- ] 
ably flourished in the first half of the sixth century ; 
and in his Virgiliana Continentia, the u^neid is 

1 Cf. St. Augustine, Confess, v. 14, vi. 4; Clemens Alex. 
Stromata, v. 8. 



8 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

treated as an image of life, and the travels of 
iEneas as the symbol of the progress of the 
human soul, from nature, through wisdom, to final 
happiness. 

From this period, the allegorical method be- 
came the recognized mode of interpreting litera- 
ture, whether sacred or profane. Petrarch, in his 
letter, De quibusdam fictionihus Virgilij,'^ treats the 
u3Eneid after the manner of Fulgentius; and even 
at the very end of the Eenaissance Tasso inter- 
preted his own romantic epics in the same way. 
After the acceptance of the method, its applica- 
tion was further complicated. Gregory the Great 
ascribes three meanings to the Bible, — the literal, 
the typical or allegorical, and the moral. Still 
later, a fourth meaning was added; and Dante 
distinctly claims all four, the literal, the allegori- 
cal, the moral or philosophical, and the anagogical 
or mystical, for his Divine Comedy} 

This method, while perhaps justifying poetry 
from the standpoint of ethics and divinity, gives it 
no place as an independent art ; thus considered, 
poetry becomes merely a popularized form of theol- 
ogy. Both Petrarch and Boccaccio regarded alle- 
gory as the warp and woof of poetry; but they 
modified the mediaeval point of view by arguing 
conversely that theology itself is a form of poetry, 
— the poetry of God. Both of them insist that the 
Bible is essentially poetical, and that Christ him- 
self spoke largely in poetical images. This point 

1 Opera, p. 867. 

2 Cf. Dante, Epist. xi. 7 ; Convito, ii. 1, 1. 



I.] THE FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM 9 

was so emphasized by Eenaissance critics that 
Berni, in his Dialogo contra i Poeti (1537), con- 
demns the poets for speaking of God as Jupiter 
and of the saints as Mercury, Hercules, Bacchus, 
and for even having the audacity to call the 
prophets and the writers of the Scriptures poets 
and makers of verses.^ 

The fourteenth and fifteenth books of Boccaccio's 
treatise, De Genealogia Deorum, have been called 
" the first defence of poesy in honor of his own art 
by a poet of the modern world ; " but Boccaccio's 
justification of imaginative literature is still prima- 
rily based on the usual mediaeval grounds. The 
reality of poetry is dependent on its allegorical 
foundations ; its moral teachings are to be sought 
in the hidden meanings discoverable beneath the 
literal expression; pagan poetry is defended for 
Christianity on the ground that the references to 
Greek and Eoman gods and rituals are to be re- 
garded only as symbolical truths. The poet's func- 
tion, for Boccaccio, as for Dante and Petrarch, was 
to hide and obscure the actual truth behind a veil 
of beautiful fictions — veritatem rerum pulchris vela- 
minibus adornare.^ 

The humanistic point of view, in regard to poe- 
try, was of a more practical and far-reaching nature 
than that of the Middle Ages. The allegorical 
interpretation did indeed continue throughout the 
Eenaissance, and Mantuan, for example, can only 

1 Berni, p. 226 sq. 

2 Petrarch, Opera, p. 1205; of. Boccaccio, Gen. degli Dei, 
p. 250, v. 



10 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chjlp. 

define a poem as a literary form whicli is bound by 
the stricter laws of metre, and which has its fundar 
mental truths hidden under the literal expressions 
of the fable. For still later writers, this mode of 
regarding literature seemed to present the only 
loophole of escape from the moral objections to 
poetry. But in employing the old method, the 
humanists carried it far beyond its original appli- 
cation. Thus, Lionardo Bruni, in his De Studiis et 
Literis (c. 1405), after dwelling on the allegorical 
interpretation of the pagan myths, argues that 
when one reads the story of ^neas and Dido, he 
pays his tribute of admiration to the genius of the 
poet, but the matter itself is known to be fiction, 
and so leaves no moral impression.^ By this Bruni 
means that fiction as such, when known to be fic- 
tion, can leave no moral impression, and secondly, 
'that poetry is to be judged by the success of the 
artist, and not by the efficacy of the moralist. 
Similarly, Battista Guarino, in his De Ordine Do- 
cendi et Studendi (1459), says that we are not dis- 
turbed by the impieties, cruelties, horrors, which we 
find in poetry; we judge these things simply by 
their congruity with the characters and incidents 
described. In other words, " we criticise the artist, 
not the moralist." ^ This is a distinct attempt at 
the aesthetic appreciation of literature, but while 
such ideas are not uncommon about this time, they 
express isolated sentiments, rather than a doctrine 
strictly coordinated with an aesthetic theory of 
poetry. 

1 Woodward, Vittorino da Feltre, p. 132. 2 j^ia. p. 175. 



I,] THE FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM 11 

The more strict defence of poetry was attempted 
for the most part on the grounds set forth by 
Horace in his Ars Poetica. At no period from the 
1 Augustan Age to the Renaissance does the Ars 
\ Poetica seem to have been entirely lost. It is 
Imentioned or quoted, for example, by Isidore of 
Seville^ in the sixth century, by John of Salis- 
bury ^ in the twelfth century, and by Dante ^ in the 
fourteenth. Horace insists on the mingled instruc- 
tiveness and pleasurableness of poetry ; and beyond 
this, he points out the value of poetry as a civiliz- 
ing factor in history, regarding the early poets as 
sages and prophets, and the inventors of arts and 
sciences : — 

*' Orpheus, inspired "by more than. Tiiimaii power, 
Did not, as poets feigned, tame savage beasts, 

/ But men as lawless and as wild as they, 
And first dissuaded them from rage and blood. 
Thus when Amphion built the Theban wall, 
They feigned the stones obeyed his magic lute ; 
Poets, the first instructors of mankind, 
Brought all things to their proper native use ; 
Some they appropriated to the gods, 
And some to public, some to private ends : 
Promiscuous love by marriage was restrained, 
Cities were built, and useful laws were made ; 
So ancient is the pedigree of verse. 
And so divine the poet's function." * . 

This conception of the early poet's function was 
an old one. It is to be found in Aristophanes ; * it 

1 Etymologix, viii. 7, 5. 2 PoHcraticus, i. 8. 

3 Moore, Dante and fiis Early Biographers, London, 1890, 
pp. 173, 174. 

4 Ars Poet. 391 (Roscommon). 5 Frogs, 1030 sq. 



12 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

runs through Eenaissance criticism; and even in 
this very century, Shelley ^ speaks of poets as " the 
authors of language, and of music, of the dance, and 
architecture, and statuary, and painting," as ^'the 
institutors of laws, and the founders of civil society, 
and the inventors of the arts of life." To-day the 
idealist takes refuge in the same faith : " The tree 
of knowledge is of equal date with the tree of life ; 
nor were even the tamer of horses, the worker in 
metals, or the sower, elder than those twin guardians 
of the soul, — the poet and the priest. Conscience 
and imagination were the pioneers who made earth 
habitable for the human spirit." ^ 

It was this ethical and civilizing function of 
poetry which was first in the minds of the human- 
ists. Action being the test of all studies,^ poetry 
must stand or fall in proportion as it conduces to 
righteous action. Thus, Lionardo Bruni * speaks of 
poetry as " so valuable an aid to knowledge, and so 
ennobling a source of pleasure"; and ^neas Syl- 
vius Piccolomini, in his treatise De Liberorum 
Educatione (1450), declares that the crucial ques- 
tion is not, Is poetry to be contemned? but. How 
are the poets to be used? and he solves his own 
question by asserting that we are to welcome all 
that poets can render in praise of integrity and in 
condemnation of vice, and that all else is to be left 
unheeded.'' Beyond this, the humanists urged in 

1 Defence of Poetry, ed. Cook, p. 5. 

2 Woodberry, " A New Defence of Poetry," in Heart of Man, 
New York, 1899, p. 76. 

3 Woodward, p. 182 55. 4 jud. p. 131. 5 ii^ia. p. 150. 



I.] THE FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM 13 

i favor of poetry the fact of its antiquity and divine 
I origin, and the further fact that it had been praised 
by great men of all professions, and its creators 
patronized by kings and emperors from time im- 
memorial. 

There were then at the end of the Middle Ages, 
and the beginning of the Renaissance, two opposing 
tendencies in regard to the poetic art, one repre- 
senting the humanistic reverence for ancient cul- 
ture, and for poetry as one of the phases of that 
culture, and the other representing not only the 
mediaeval tradition, but a purism allied to that of 
early Christianity, and akin to the ascetic concep- 
tions of life found in almost every period. These 
two tendencies are expressed specifically in their 
noblest forms by the great humanist Poliziano, and 
the great moral reformer Savonarola. In the Sylvoe, 
written toward the close of the fifteenth century, 
Poliziano dwells on the divine origin of poetry, 
as Boccaccio had done in his Vita di Dante ; and 
then, after the manner of Horace, he describes its 
ennobling influence on man, and its general influ- 
ence on the progress of civilization.^ He then pro- 
ceeds to survey the progress of poetry from the 
most ancient times, and in so doing may be said to 
have written the first modern history of literature. 
The second section of the Sylvm discusses the 
bucolic poets ; the third contains that glorification 
of Virgil which began during the Middle Ages, 
and, continued by Vida and others, became in 

1 Pope, Selecta Poemata, ii. 108; cf. Ars Poet. 398. 



14 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

Scaliger literary deification; and the last section 
is devoted to Homer, wlio is considered as the great 
teacher of wisdom, and the wisest of the ancients. 
Nowhere does Poliziano exhibit any appreciation 
of the aesthetic value of poetry, but his enthusiasm 
for the great poets, and indeed for all forms of 
ancient culture, is unmistakable, and combined 
with his immense erudition marks him as a repre- 
sentative poet of humanism.-^ 

On the other hand, the puristic conception of art 
is elaborated at great length by Savonarola in an 
apology for poetry contained in his tractate, De 
Divisione ac Utilitate Omnium Scientarum,^ written 
about 1492. After classifying the sciences in true 
scholastic fashion, and arranging them according 
to their relative importance and their respective 
utility for Christianity, he attacks all learning as 
superfluous and dangerous, unless restricted to a 
chosen few. Poetry, according to the scholastic 
arrangement, is grouped with logic and grammar; 
and this mediaeval classification fixes Savonarola's 
conception of the theory of poetic art. He expressly 
says that he attacks the abuse of poetry and not 
poetry itself, but there can be no doubt that, at 
bottom, he was intolerant of creative literature. 
Like Plato, like moral reformers of all ages, he 
feared the free play of the imaginative faculty; 
and in connecting poetry with logic he was tending 
toward the elimination of the imagination in art. 
The basis of his aesthetic system, such as it is, 

1 Cf. Gaspary, ii. 220. 

2 Villari, p. 501 sg., and Perrens, ii. 328 sq. 



I.] THE FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM 15 

rests wholly on that of Thomas Aquinas ; ^ but he 
is in closer accord with Aristotle when he points out 
that versification, a merely conventional accompa- 
niment of poetry, is not to be confounded with 
the essence of poetry itself. This distinction is 
urged to defend the Scriptures, which he regards 
as the highest and holiest form of poetry. For 
him poetry is coordinate with philosophy and with 
thought; but in his intolerance of poetry in its 
lower forms, he would follow Plato in banishing 
poets from an ideal state. The imitation of the 
ancient poets especially falls under his suspicion, 
and in an age given up to their worship he denies 
both their supremacy and their utility. In fine, 
as a reformer, he represents for us the religious; 
reaction against the paganization of culture by the 
humanists. But the forces against him were too 
strong. Even the Christianization of culture ef- 
fected during the next century by the Council of 
Trent was hardly more than temporary. Human- 
ism, which represents the revival of ancient pa- 
gan culture, and rationalism, which represents the 
growth of the modern spirit in science and art, 
were currents too powerful to be impeded by any 
reformer, however great, and, when combined in 
classicism, were to reign supreme in literature 
for centuries to come. But Savonarola and Poli- 
ziano serve to indicate that modern literary criti- 
cism had not yet begun. For until some rational 
answer to the objections urged against poetry in 

1 Cf. Cartier, L^ Esthetique de Savonarole^ in Didron's An- 
nales ArcMologiques, 1847, vii. 255 sq. 



16 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

antiquity and in the Middle Ages was forthcom- 
ing, literary criticism in any true sense was funda- 
mentally impossible; and that answer came only 
with the recovery of Aristotle's Poetics. 

III. The Final Justification of Poetry 

The influence of Aristotle's Poetics in classical 
antiquity, so far as it is possible to judge, was 
very slight ; there is no apparent reference to the 
Poetics in Horace, Cicero, or Quintilian,^ and it 
was entirely lost sight of during the Middle Ages. 
Its modern transmission was due almost exclu- 
sively to Orientals.^ The first Oriental version of 
Aristotle's treatise appears to have been that made 
by Abu-Baschar, a Nestorian Christian, from the 
Syriac into Arabic, about the year 935. Two 
centuries later, the Moslem philosopher Averroes 
made an abridged version of the Poetics, which 
was translated into Latin in the thirteenth cen- 
tury, by a certain German, named Hermann, and 
again, by Mantinus of Tortosa in Spain, in the 
fourteenth century. Hermann's version seems to 
have circulated considerably in the Middle Ages, 
but it had no traceable influence on critical lit- 
erature whatsoever. It is mentioned and censured 
by Roger Bacon, but the Poetics in any form was 
probably unknown to Dante, to Boccaccio, and 
beyond a single obscure reference, to Petrarch. 
Some of the humanists, such as Benvenuto da 
Imola in his commentary on Dante, cite the 
1 Egger, 209 sq. 2 n^ia, 555 sq. 



I.] THE FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM 17 

version of Averroes ; but the critical ideas of 
the period show slight indication of Aristotelian 
influence, and during the sixteenth century 
itself there seems to have been a well-defined 
impression that the Poetics had been recovered 
only after centuries of oblivion. Thus, Bernardo 
Segni, who translated the Poetics into Italian in 
1549, speaks of it as "abandoned and neglected 
for a long time";^ and Bernardo Tasso, some 
ten years later, refers to it as "buried for so 
long a time in the obscure shadows of igno- 
rance/' ^ 

It was then as a new work of Aristotle that the 
Latin translation by Giorgio Yalla, published at f 
Venice in 1498, must have appeared to Valla's con- ^ 
temporaries. Though hardly successful as a work 
of scholarship, this translation, and the Greek text 
of the Poetics published in the Aldine Rhetores 
Groeci in 1508, had considerable influence on dra- 
matic literature, but scarcely any immediate influ- 
ence on literary criticism. Somewhat later, in 
1536, Alessandro de' Pazzi published a revised 
Latin version, accompanied by the original; and 
from this time, the influence of the Aristotelian 
canons becomes manifest in critical literature. In 
1548, Robertelli produced the first critical edition 
of the Poetics, with a Latin translation and a 
learned commentary, and in the very next year the 
first Italian translation was given to the world 

1 Segni, p. 160. 

2 B. Tasso, Lettere, ii. 525. So also, Robortelli, 1548, ** Jacuit 
liber hie neglectus, ad nostra fere haec usque tempora." 

c 



18 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

by Bernardo Segni. From tliat day to this the edi- 
tions and translations of the Poetics have increased 
beyond number, and there is hardly a single pas- 
sage in Aristotle's treatise which has not been dis- 
cussed by innumerable commentators and critics. 

It was in Aristotle's Poetics that the Renaissance 
was to find, if not a complete, at least a rational 
justification of poetry, and an answer to every one 
of the Platonic and mediaeval objections to imagi- 
native literature. As to the assertion that poetry 
diverges from actual reality, Aristotle^ contended 
that there is to be found in poetry a higher reality 
than that of mere commonplace fact, that poetry 
deals not with particulars, but with universals, and 
that it aims at describing not what has been, but 
what might have been or ought to be. In other 
words, poetry has little regard for the actuality of 
the specific event, but aims at the reality of an eter- 
nal probability. It matters not whether Achilles 
or ^neas did this thing, or that thing, which 
Homer or Virgil ascribes to either, but if Achilles 
or ^neas was such a man as the poet describes, he 
must necessarily act as Homer or Virgil has made 
him do. It is needless to say that Aristotle is here 
simply distinguishing between ideal truth and 
actual fact, and in asserting that it is the function 
of poetry to imitate only ideal truth he laid the 
foundations, not only of an answer to mediseval 
objections, but also of modern aesthetic criticism. 

Beyond this, poetry is justified on the grounds of 
morality, for while not having a distinctly moral 
1 Poet. ix. 



I.] THE FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM 19 

aim, it is essentially moral, because it is this ideal 
representation of life, and an idealized version of 
human life must necessarily present it in its moral 
aspects. Aristotle distinctly combats the traditional 
Greek conception of the didactic function of poetry ; 
but it is evident that he insists fundamentally that 
literature must be moral, for he sternly rebukes 
Euripides several times on grounds that are moral, 
rather than purely aesthetic. In answer to the ob- 
jection that poetry, instead of calming, stirs and 
excites our meanest passions, that it "waters and 
cherishes those emotions which ought to wither 
with drought, and constitutes them our rulers, 
when they ought to be our subjects,"^ Aristotle 
taught those in the Eenaissance who were able to 
understand him, that poetry, and especially dra- 
matic poetry, does not indeed starve the emotions, 
but excites them only to allay and to regulate them, 
and in this aesthetic process purifies and ennobles 
them.^ In pointing out these things he has justified 
the utility of poetry, regarding it as more serious and 
philosophic than history, because it universalizes 
mere fact, and imitates life in its noblest aspects. 

These arguments were incorporated into Renais- 
sance criticism ; they were emphasized, as we shall 
see, over and over again, and they formed the basis 
of the justification of poetry in modern critical 
literature. At the same time, this purely aesthetic 
conception of art did not prevail by itself in the 
sixteenth century, even in those for whom Aristotle 
meant most, and who best understood his meaning ; 
1 Plato, Rep. X. 660. 2 Poet. vi. 2; Pol. viii. 7. 



20 LITERACY CRITICISM IN IfALY [chap. 

the Horatian elements, also, as found in the early 
humanists, were elaborated and discussed. In the 
Poetica of Daniello (1536), these Horatian elements 
form the basis for a defence of poetry^ that has 
many marked resemblances to various passages in 
Sir Philip Sidney's Defence of Poesy. After re- 
ferring to the antiquity and nobility of poetry, and 
afB.rming that no other art is nobler or more ancient, 
Daniello shows that all things known to man, all 
the secrets of God and nature, are described by the 
poets in musical numbers and with exquisite orna- 
ment. He furthermore asserts, in the manner of 
Horace, that the poets were the inventors of the 
arts of life; and in answer to the objection that it 
was the philosophers who in reality did these things, 
he shows that while instruction is more proper to 
the philosopher than to the poet, poets teach too, 
in many more ways, and far more pleasantly, than 
any philosopher can. They hide their useful teach- 
ings under various fictions and fabulous veils, as 
the physician covers bitter medicine with a sweet 
coating. The style of the philosopher is dry and 
obscure, without any force or beauty by itself ; and 
the delightful instruction of poetry is far more 
effective than the abstract and harsh teachings of 
philosophy. Poetry, indeed, was the only form of 
philosophy that primitive men had, and Plato, while 
regarding himself as an enemy of poets, was really 
a great poet himself, for he expresses all his ideas 
in a wondrously harmonious rhythm, and with great 
splendor of words and images. This defence of 
1 Daniello, p. 10 sq. 



I.] THE FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM 21 

Daniello's is interesting, as anticipating the general 
form of such, apologies throughout the sixteenth 
century. 

Similarly, Minturno in his De Poeta (1559), elab- 
orates the Horatian suggestions for a defence of 
poetry. He begins by pointing out the broad in- 
clusiveness of poetry, which may be said to com- 
prehend in itself every form of human learning, and 
by showing that no form of learning can be found 
before the first poets, and that no nation, however 
barbarous, has ever been averse to poetry. The 
Hebrews praised God in verse; the Greeks, Ital- 
ians, Germans, and British have all honored poetry ; 
the Persians have had their Magi and the Gauls 
their bards. Verse, while not essential to poetry, 
gives the latter much of its delightful effectiveness, 
and if the gods ever speak, they certainly speak in 
verse ; indeed, in primitive times it was in verse 
that all sciences, history, and philosophy were 
written.^ 

To answer the traditional objections against im- 
aginative literature which had survived beyond the 
Middle Ages seemed to the K-enaissance a simpler 
task, however, than to answer the more philosophi- 
cal objections urged in the Platonic dialogues. The 
authority of Plato during the Penaissance made it 
impossible to slight the arguments stated by him in 
the Republic, and elsewhere. The writers of this 
period were particularly anxious to refute, or at 
least to explain away, the reasons for which Plato 
had banished poets from his ideal commonwealth. 

1 De Poeta, p. 13 sq. 



22 LITERAKY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

Some critics, like Bernardo Tasso^ and Daniello,^ 
asserted that Plato had not argued against poetry 
itself, but only against the abuse of poetry. Thus, 
according to Tasso, only impure and effeminate 
poets were to be excluded from the ideal state, and 
according to Daniello, only the more immoral tragic 
poets, and especially the authors of obscene and 
lampooning comedies. Other Eenaissance writers, 
like Minturno ^ and Fracastoro,* answered the Pla- 
tonic objections on more philosophical grounds. 
Thus Pracastoro answers Plato's charge that, since 
poetry is three removes from ideal truth, poets 
are fundamentally ignorant of the realities they 
attempt to imitate, by pointing out that the poet is 
indeed ignorant of what he is speaking of, in so far 
as he is a versifier and skilled in language, just as 
the philosopher or historian is ignorant of natural 
or historical facts in so far as he, too, is merely 
skilled in language, but knows these facts in so far as 
he is learned, and has thought out the problems of 
nature and history. The poet, as well as the phil- 
osopher and the historian, must possess knowledge, 
if he is to teach anything ; he, too, must learn the 
things he is going to write about, and must solve 
the problems of life and thought; he, too, must 
have a philosophical and an historical training. 
Plato's objection, indeed, applies to the philosopher, 
to the orator, to the historian, quite as much as to 
the poet. As to Plato's second charge, that imag- 
ination naturally tends toward the worst things, 

1 Lettere, ii. 526. 3 Dq Poeta, p. 30 sq. 

2 Poetica, p. 14 sq. * Opera, i. 361 sq. 



I.] THE FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM 23 

and accordingly that poets write obscenely and 
blasphemously, Fracastoro points out that this is 
not the fault of the art, but of those who abuse it ; 
there are, indeed, immoral and enervating poets, 
and they ought to be excluded, not only from 
Plato's, but from every commonwealth. Thus va- 
rious Aristotelian and Horatian elements were 
combined to form a definite body of Renaissance 
criticism. 



CHAPTEE II 

THE GENERAL THEORY OF POETRY IN THE ITALIAN 
RENAISSANCE 

In the first book of his Geography Strabo defines 
poetry as ^^ a kind of elementary philosophy, which 
introduces us early to life, and gives us pleasura- 
ble instruction in reference to character, emotion, 
action." This passage sounds the keynote of the 
Renaissance theory of poetry. Poetry is therein 
stated to be a form of philosophy, and, moreover, a 
philosophy whose subject is life, and its object is 
said to be pleasurable instruction. , 

I. Poetry as a Form of Scholastic Philosophy 

In the first place, poetry is a form of philosophy. 
Savonarola had classed poetry with logic and 
grammar, and had asserted that a knowledge of 
logic is essential to the composing of poetry. The 
division of the sciences and the relative importance 
of each were a source of infinite scholastic discus- 
sion during the Middle Ages. Aristotle had first 
placed dialectic or logic, rhetoric, and poetics in 
the same category of efficient philosophy. But 
Averroes was probably the first to confuse the 
function of poetics with that of logic, and to make 
24 



CHAP. II.] THE GENERAL THEORY OF POETRY 25 

the former a subdivisiorij or form, of the latter ; 
and this classification appears to have been ac- 
cepted by the scholastic philosophers of the Middle 
Ages. 

This conception of the position of poetry in the 
body of human knowledge may be found, however, 
throughout the Renaissance. Thus, Eobortelli, in 
his commentary on Aristotle's Poetics (1548), gives 
the usual scholastic distinctions between the various 
forms of the written or spoken word {or alio) : the 
demonstrative, which deals with the true ; the dia- 
lectic, which deals with the probable ; the rhetorical, 
with the persuasive ; and the poetic, with the false 
or fabulous.-^ By the term " false " or "fabulous'^ is 
meant merely that the subject of poetry is not \ 
actual fact, but that it deals with things as they 
ought to be, rather than as they are. Varchi, in his 
public lectures on poetry (1553), divides philosophy 
into two forms, real and rational. Real philosophy 
deals with things, and includes metaphysics, ethics, 
physics, geometry, and the like; while rational 
philosophy, which includes logic, dialectic, rhet- 
oric, history, poetry, and grammar, deals not with 
things, but with words, and is not philosophy \ 
proper, but the instrument of philosophy. Poetry 
is therefore, strictly speaking, neither an art nor 
a science, but an instrument or faculty ; and it is 
only an art in the sense that it has been reduced to 
rules and precepts. It is, in fact, a form of logic, 
and no man, according to Yarchi, can be a poet 
unless he is a logician ; the better logician he is, 
1 Robortelli, p. 1 sg. 



26 LITEKARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

the better poet lie will be. Logic and poetry dif- 
fer, however, in their matter and their instruments ; 
for the subject of logic is truth, arrived at by means 
of the demonstrative syllogism, while the subject of 
poetry is fiction or invention, arrived at by means 
of that form of the syllogism known as the example. 
Here the enthymeme, or example, which Aristotle 
has made the instrument of rhetoric, becomes the 
instrument of poetry. 

This classification survived in the Aristotelian 
schools at Padua and elsewhere as late as Zabarella 
and Campanella. Zabarella, a professor of logic 
and later of philosophy at Padua from 1564 to 
1589, explains at length Averroes's theory that 
poetics is a form of logic, in a treatise on the 
nature of logic, published in 1578.^ He concludes 
that the two faculties, logic and poetics, are not 
instruments of philosophy in general, but only of a 
part of it, for they refer rather to action than to 
knowledge; that is, they come under Aristotle's 
category of efficient philosophy. They are not the 
instruments of useful art or of moral philosophy, 
the end of which is to make one's self good ; but of 
civil philosophy, the end of which is to make others 
good. If it be objected that they are twv evavTMv, 
that is, of both good and evil, it may be answered 
that their proper end is good. Thus, in the jSympo- 

1 This analysis of Zabarella, Opera Logica, De Natura 
LogicsB, ii. 13-23, I owe to the kindness of Professor Butcher 
of Edinburgh. Zabarella probably derived his knowledge of 
Aristotle's Poetics from Robortelli, under whom he studied 
Greek. Cf. Bayle, Diet. s. v. Zabarella. 



II.] THE GENERAL THEORY OF POETRY 27 

sium, the true poet is praised ; while in the Republic 
the poets Avho aim at pleasure and who corrupt their 
audiences are censured ; and Aristotle in his defini- 
tion of tragedy says that the end of tragedy is to 
purge the passions and to correct the morals of men 
{affectiones animi purgare et moires corrigere). 

Even later than Zabarella, we find in the Poetica 
of Campanella a division of the sciences very simi- 
lar to that of Savonarola and Yarchi. Theology is 
there placed at the head of all knowledge, in 
accordance with the mediaeval tradition, while 
poetics, with dialectic, grammar, and rhetoric, is 
placed among the logical sciences. Considering 
poetica as a form of philosophy, another commen- 
tator on Aristotle, Maggi (1550), takes great pains 
to distinguish its various manifestations. Poetica 
is the art of composing poetry, poesis, the poetry 
composed according to this art, poeta, the composer 
of poetry, and poema, a single specimen of poetry.^ 
This distinction is a commonplace of classical 
criticism, and appears in Varro, Plutarch, Her- 
mogenes, and Aphthonius. 

II. Poetry as an Imitation of Life 

In the second place, according to the passage 
from Strabo cited at the beginning of this chapter, 
poetry introduces us early to life, or, in other words, 
its subject is human action, and it is what Aristotle 
calls it, an imitation of human life. This raises 

1 Maggi, p. 28 sq. Cf. B. Tasso, Lettere, ii. 514; Scaliger, 
Poet. i. 2; Castelvetro, Poetica, p. 7 ; Salviati, Cod. Magliabech. 
ii. ii. 11, fol. 384: v. ; B, Jonson, Timber, p. 74. 



28 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

two distinct problems. First, what is the meaning 
of imitation ? and what in life is the subject-matter 
of this imitation ? 

The conception of imitation held by the critics of 
the Renaissance was that expressed by Aristotle in 
the ninth chapter of the Poetics. The passage is as 
follows : — 

" It is evident from what has been said that it is not the 
function of the poet to relate what has happened, but what 
may happen, — what is possible according to the law of 
probability or necessity. The poet and the historian differ 
not by writing in verse or in prose. The work of Herodotus 
might be put into verse, and it would still be a species of 
history, with metre no less than without it. The true dif- 
ference is that one relates what has happened, the other 
what may happen. Poetry, therefore, is a more philosophi- 
cal and a higher thing than history ; for poetry tends to ex- 
press the universal, history the particular. The universal 
tells us how a person of given character will on occasion 
speak or act, according to the law of probability or neces- 
sity ; and it is this universality at which poetry aims in giv- 
ing expressive names to the characters." 

In this passage Aristotle has briefly formulated 
a conception of ideal imitation which may be re- 
garded as universally valid, and which, repeated 
over and over again, became the basis of Eenais- 
sance criticism. 

In the Poetica of Daniello (1536), occurs the 
first allusion in modern literary criticism to the 
Aristotelian notion of ideal imitation. According 
to Daniello, the poet, unlike the historian, can min- 
gle fictions with facts, because he is not obliged, 



II.] THE GENERAL THEORY OF POETRY 29 

as is the historian, to describe things as they actu- 
ally are or have been, but rather as they ought to 
be ; and it is in this that the poet most differs from 
the historian, and not in the writing of verses ; for 
even if Livy's works were versified, they would 
still be histories as before.^ This is of course 
almost a paraphrase of the passage in Aristotle; 
but that Daniello did not completely understand 
the ideal element in Aristotle's conception is shown 
by the further distinction which he draws be- 
tween the historian and the poet. For he adds 
that the poet and the historian have much in com- 
mon; in both there are descriptions of places, 
peoples, laws ; both contain the representation of 
vices and virtues ; in both, amplification, variety, 
and digressions are proper ; and both teach, delight, 
and profit at the same time. They differ, how- 
ever, in that the historian, in telling his story, 
recounts it exactly as it happened, and adds noth- 
ing ; whereas the poet is permitted to add whatever 
he desires, so long as the fictitious events have all 
the appearance of truth. 

Somewhat later, Eobortelli treats the question 
of aesthetic imitation from another point of view. 
The poet deals with things as they ought to be, but 
he can either appropriate actual fact, or he can invent 
his material. If he does the former, he narrates 
the truth not as it really happened, but as it 
might or ought to happen ; while if he invents his 
material, he must do so in accordance with the law 
of possibility, or necessity, or probability and veri- 
1 Daniello, p. 41 s^f. 



30 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap, 

similitude.^ Thus Xenophon, in describing Cyrus, 
does not depict him as he actually was, but as the 
best and noblest king can be and ought to be ; and 
Cicero, in describing the orator, follows the same 
method. From this it is evident that the poet can 
invent things transcending the order of nature; 
but if he does so, he should describe what might or 
ought to have been. 

Here Eobortelli answers a possible objection to 
Aristotle's statement that poets deal only with 
what is possible and verisimilar. Is it possible 
and verisimilar that the gods should eat ambrosia 
and drink nectar, as Homer describes, and that 
such a being as Cerberus should have several 
heads, as we find in Virgil, not to mention various 
improbable things that occur in many other poets ? 
The answer to such an objection is that poets can 
invent in two ways. They can invent either things 
according to nature or things transcending nature. 
In the former case, these things must be in keep- 
ing with the laws of probability and necessity ; but 
in the latter case, the things are treated according 
to a process described by Aristotle himself, and 
called paralogism, which means, not necessarily 
false reasoning, but the natural, if quite inconclu- 
sive, logical inference that the things we know not 
of are subject to the same laws as the things we 
know. The poets accept the existence of the gods 
from the common notion of men, and then treat all 
that relates to these deities in accordance with this 
system of paralogism. In tragedy and comedy 
1 Robortelli, p. 86 sg. 



II.] THE GENERAL THEORY OF POETRY 31 

men are described as acting in accordance with, the 
ordinary occurrences of nature ; but in epic poetry 
this is not entirely the case, and the marvellous is 
therefore admitted. Accordingly, this marvellous 
element has the widest scope in epic poetry ; while 
in comedy, which treats of things nearest to our 
own time, it ought not to be admitted at all. 

But there is another problem suggested by the 
passage from the Poetics which has been cited. 
Aristotle says that imitation, and not metre, is the 
test of poetry ; that even if a history were versi- 
fied, it would still remain history. The question 
then arises whether a writer who imitates in prose, 
that is, without verse, would be worthy of the title 
of poet. Eobortelli answers this question by point- 
ing out that metre does not constitute the nature, 
force, or essence of poetry, which depends entirely 
on the fact of imitation; but at the same time, 
while one who imitates without verse is a poet, in 
the best and truest poetry imitation and metre are 
combined.^ 

In Fracastoro's NaugeriuSy sive de Poetica Dia- 
logus (1555), there is the completest explanation 
of the ideal element in the Aristotelian conception 
of imitation. The poet, according to Aristotle, dif- 
fers from other writers in that the latter consider 
merely the particular, while the poet aims at the 
universal. He is, in other words, attempting to 
describe the simple and essential truth of things, 
not by depicting the nude thing as it is, but the 
idea of things clothed in all their beauties.^ Here 
1 Robortelli, p. 90 sg. 2 Fracastoro, i. 340. 



32 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

Fracastoro attempts to explain the Aristotelian con- 
ception of the type with the aid of the Platonic 
notion of beauty. There were, in fact, in the 
Eenaissance, three conceptions of beauty in gen- 
eral vogue. Eirst, the purely objective conception 
that beauty is fixed or formal, that it consists in 
approximating to a certain mechanical or geometri- 
cal form, such as roundness, squareness, or straight- 
ness; secondly, the Platonic conception, ethical 
rather than aesthetic, connecting the beautiful with 
the good, and regarding both as the manifestation 
of divine power; and, thirdly, a more purely aes- 
thetic conception of beauty, connecting it either 
with grace or conformity, or in a higher sense with 
whatever is proper or fitting to an object. This 
last idea, which at times approaches the modern 
conception that beauty consists in the realization 
of the objective character of any particular thing 
and in the fulfilment of the law of its own being, 
seems to have been derived from the Idea of the 
Greek rhetorician Hermogenes, whose influence 
during the sixteenth century was considerable, 
even as early as the time of Filelfo. It was the 
celebrated rhetorician Giulio Cammillo, however, 
who appears to have popularized Hermogenes in 
the sixteenth century, by translating the Idea into 
Italian, and by expounding it in a discourse pub- 
lished posthumously in 1544. 

As will be seen, Pracastoro's conception of beauty 
approximates both to the Platonic and to the more 
purely aesthetic doctrines which we have men- 
tioned; and he expounds and elaborates this 



II.] THE GENERAL THEORY OF POETRY 33 

aesthetic notion in the following manner. Each 
art has its own rules of proper expression. The 
historian or the philosopher does not aim at all the 
beauties or elegancies of expression, but only such 
as are proper to history or philosophy. But to the 
poet no grace, no embellishment, no ornament, is 
ever alien ; he does not consider the particular 
beauty of any one field, — that is, the singular, or 
particular, of Aristotle, — but all that pertains to 
the simple idea of beauty and of beautiful speech. 
Yet this universalized beauty is no extraneous 
thing; it cannot be added to objects in which it 
has no place, as a golden coat on a rustic ; all the 
essential beauty of each species is to be the es- 
pecial regard of the poet. For in imitating per- 
sons and things, he neglects no beauty or elegance 
which he can attribute to them; he strives only 
after the most beautiful and most excellent, and 
in this way affects the minds of men in the direc- 
tion of excellence and beauty. 

This suggests a problem which is at the very 
root of Aristotle's conception of ideal imitation ; 
and it is Fracastoro's high merit that he was one 
of the first writers of the Eenaissance to explain 
away the objection, and to formulate in the most 
perfect manner what Aristotle really meant. For, 
even granting that the poet teaches more than 
others, may it not be urged that it is not what per- 
tains to the thing itself, but the beauties which he 
adds to them, — that it is ornament, extraneous to 
the thing itself {extra rern), and not the thing 
itself, — which seems to be the chief regard of the 



34 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

poet? But after all, what is extra rem 9 Are 
beautiful columns, domes, peristyles extra rem, 
because a thatched roof will protect us from rain 
and frost ; or is noble raiment extra rem, because 
a rustic garment would suffice ? The poet, so far 
from adding anything extraneous to the things 
he imitates, depicts them in their very essence; 
and it is because he alone finds the true beauty in 
things, because he attributes to them their true 
nobility and perfection, that he is more useful than 
any other writer. The poet does not, as some 
think, deal with the false and the unreal.^ He 
assumes nothing openly alien to truth, though he 
may permit himself to treat of old and obscure 
legends which cannot be verified, or of things 
which are regarded as true on account of their ap- 
pearance, their allegorical signification (such as the 
ancient myths and fables), or their common accept- 
ance by men. So we may conclude that not every 
one who uses verse is a poet, but only he who is 
moved by the true beauty of things — by their 
simple and essential beauties, not merely apparent 
ones. This is Fracastoro's conclusion, and it con- 
tains that mingling of Platonism and Aristote- 
lianism which may be found somewhat later in 
Tasso and Sir Philip Sidney. It is the chief merit 
of Fracastoro's dialogue, that even while emphasiz- 
ing this Platonic element, he clearly distinguishes 
and defines the ideal element in aesthetic imitation. 
About the same time, in the public lectures of 
Yarchi (1553), there was an attempt to formulate 
1 Fracastoro, i. 357 sq. 



II.] THE GENERAL THEORY OF POETRY 35 

a more explicit definition of poetry on the basis of 
Aristotle's definition^ of tragedy. Poetry, accord- 
ing to Varchi, is an imitation of certain actions, 
passions, habits of mind, with song, diction, and 
harmony, together or separately, for the purpose of 
removing the vices of men and inciting them to 
virtue, in order that they may attain their true 
happiness and beatitude.^ In the first place, poetry 
is an imitation. Every poet imitates, and any one 
who does not imitate cannot be called a poet. 
Accordingly, Varchi follows Maggi in distinguish- 
ing three classes of poets, — the poets par excellence, 
who imitate in verse ; the poets who imitate with- 
out using verse, such as Lucian, Boccaccio in the 
Decameron^ and Sannazaro in the Arcadia; and the 
poets, commonly but less properly so called, who 
use verse, but who* do not imitate. Verse, while 
not an essential attribute of poetry, is generally 
required; for men's innate love of harmony, accord- 
ing to Aristotle, was one of the causes that gave 
rise to poetic composition. Certain forms of poe- 
try however, such as tragedy, cannot be written 
without verse ; for " embellished language," that 
is, verse, is included in the very definition of 
tragedy as given by Aristotle. 

The question whether poetry could be written 
in prose was a source of much discussion in the 
Eenaissance; but the consensus of opinion was 
overwhelmingly against the prose drama. Comedy 
in prose was the usual Italian practice of this 
period, and various scholars^ even sanction the 
1 Poet. vi. 2. 2 Varchi, p. 578. 3 E.g. Piccolomini, p. 27 sq. 



36 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [cuap. 

practice on theoretical grounds. But the contro- 
versy was not brought to a head until the publica- 
tion of Agostino Michele's Discorso in cui si dimos- 
tra come si possono scrivere le Commedie e le Tragedie 
in Prosa in 1592; and eight years later, in 1600, 
Paolo Beni published his Latin dissertation, Dis- 
putatio in qua ostenditur prcestare Comcediam atque 
Tragoediam metrorum vincuUs solvere} The lan- 
guage of Beni's treatise was strong — its very title 
speaks of liberating the drama from the shackles 
of verse ; and for a heresy of this sort, couched as 
it was in language that might even have been revo- 
lutionary enough for the French romanticists of 
1830, the sixteenth century was not yet fully pre- 
pared. Faustino Summo, answering Beni in the 
same year, asserts that not only is it improper for 
tragedy and comedy to be written in prose, but 
that no form of poetry whatever can properly be 
composed without the accompaniment of verse.^ 
The result of the whole controversy was to fix the 
metrical form of the drama throughout the period 
of classicism. But it need not be said that the 
same conclusion was not accepted by all for every 
form of poetry. The remark of Cervantes in Don 
Quixote, that epics can be written in prose as well as 
in verse, is well known ; and Julius Caesar Scaliger ^ 
speaks of Heliodorus's romance as a model epic. 

Scaliger, however, regards verse as a funda- 
mental part of poetry. For him, poetry and his- 
tory have the forms of narration and ornament in 

1 Tiraboschi, vii. 1331. s Poet. iii. 95. 

2 Summo, pp. 61-69. 



II.] THE GENERAL THEORY OE POETRY 37 

common, but differ in that poetry adds fictions to 
the things that are true, or imitates actual things 
with fictitious ones, — majore sane apparatu, that 
is, among other things, with verse. As a result of 
this notion, Scaliger asserts that if the history of 
Herodotus were versified, it would no longer be 
history, but historical poetry. Under no circum- 
stances, theoretically, will he permit the separation 
of poetry from mere versification. He accordingly 
dismisses with contempt the usual argument of the 
period that Lucan was an historian rather than a 
poet. "Take an actual history," says Scaliger; 
" how does Lucan differ, for example, from Livy ? 
He differs in using verse. Well, then he is a poet." 
Poetry, then, is imitation in verse ; ^ but in imitat- 
ing what ought to be rather than what is, the poet 
creates another nature and other fortunes, as if he 
were another God.^ 

It will be seen from these discussions that the 
Kenaissance always conceived of aesthetic imitation 
in this ideal sense. There are scarcely any traces 
of realism, in anything like its modern sense, in 
the literary criticism of this period. Torquato 
Tasso does indeed say that art becomes most per- 
fect as it approaches most closely to nature ; ^ and 

1 Poet. i. 1. 

2 Another critic of the time, Vettori, 1560, pp. 14, 93, attacks 
poetic prose on the ground that in Aristotle's definition of the 
various poetic forms, verse is always spoken of as an essential 
part. It is interesting to note that the phrase " poetic prose " 
is used, perhaps for the first time, in Minturno, Arte Poetica, 
1564, p. 3, etc. 

3 Opere, x. 254. Cf. Minturno, Arte Poetica, p. 33. 



38 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

Scaliger declares that tlie dramatic poet must beyond 
all things aim at reproducing the actual conditions 
of life.^ But it is the appearance of reality, and 
not the mere actuality itself, that the critics are 
speaking of here. With the vast body of mediaeval 
literature before them, in which impossibilities fol- 
low upon impossibilities, and the sense of reality is 
continually obscured, the critical writers of the 
Eenaissance were forced to lay particular stress on 
the element of probability, the element of close 
approach to the seeming realities of life; but the 
imitation of life is for them, nevertheless, an imita- 
tion of things as they ought to be — in other words, 
the imitation is ideal. Muzio says that nature is 
adorned by art : — 

' ' Suol far P opere sue roze, e tra le mani 
Lasciarle a 1' arte, che le adorni e limi ; " 2 

and he distinctly affirms that the poet cannot re- 
main content with exact portraiture, with the mere 
actuality of life : — 

" Lascia '1 vero a 1' historia, e ne' tuoi versi 
Sotto i nomi privati a 1' universo 
Mostra che fare e che non far si debbia." 

In keeping with this idealized conception of art, 
Muzio asserts that everything obscene or immoral 
must be excluded from poetry; and this puristic 
notion of art is everywhere emphasized in Eenais- 
sance criticism. It was the verisimile, as has been 
said, that the writers of this period especially in- 
sisted upon. Poetry must have the appearance of 
1 Poet. iii. m. 2 Muzio, p. 69. 



II.] THE GENERAL THEORY OF POETRY 39 

truth, that is, it must be probable ; for unless the 
reader believes what he reads, his spirit cannot be 
moved by the poem.^ This anticipates Boileau's 
famous line : — 

*' L'esprit n'est point 6nm de ce qu'il ne croit pas." 2 

But beyond and above the verisimile, the poet 
must pay special regard to the ethical element 
(il lodevole e Vonesto). A poet of the sixteenth 
century, Palingenius, says that there are three 
qualities required of every poem : — 

*♦ Atqui scire opus est, triplex genus esse bonorum, 
Utile, delectans, majusque ambobus honestum." ^ 

Poetry, then, is an ideal representation of life; 
but should it be still further limited, and made an 
imitation of only human life? In other words, are 
the actions of men the only possible themes of 
poetry, or may it deal, as in the Georgics and the 
De Rerum Natura, with the various facts of external 
nature and of science, which are only indirectly 
connected with human life? May poetry treat of 
the life of the world as well as of the life of men; 
and if only of the latter, is it to be restricted to 
the actions of men, or may it also depict their 
passions, emotions, and character ? In short, how 
far may external nature on the one hand, and the 
internal working of the human soul on the other 
hand, be regarded as the subject-matter of poetry? 
Aristotle says that poetry deals with the actions of 

1 Giraldi Cintio, i. 61. 

2 Art Po4t. ill. 50. Cf. Horace, Ars Poet. 188. 

3 Zodiac. Vitse, i. 143. 



40 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

men, but lie uses the word " actions " in a larger 
sense than many of the Eenaissance critics appear 
to have believed. His real meaning is thus ex- 
plained by a modern writer: — 

" Everything that expresses the mental life, that reveals 
a rational personality, will fall within this larger sense of 
action. . . . The phrase is virtually an equivalent for ijdri 
(character), irddrj (emotion), Trpd^ets (action). . . . The 
common original from which all the arts draw is human life, 
— its mental processes, its spiritual movements, its outward 
acts issuing from deeper sources ; in a word, all that con- 
stitutes the inward and essential activity of the soul. On 
this principle landscape and animals are not ranked among 
the objects of aesthetic imitation. The whole universe is not 
conceived of as the raw material of art. Aristotle's theory 
is in agreement with the practice of the Greek poets and 
artists of the classical period, who introduce the external 
world only so far as it forms a background of action, and 
enters as an emotional element into man's life and heightens 
the human interest." i 

Aristotle distinctly says that " even if a treatise 
on medicine or natural philosophy be brought out 
in verse, the name of poet is by custom given to 
the author; and yet Homer and Empedocles have 
nothing in common except the material ; the former, 
therefore, is properly styled poet, the latter, physi- 
cist rather than poet. '^ ^ 

The Aristotelian doctrine was variously conceived 
during the Eenaissance. Fracastoro, for example, 
asserts that the imitation of human life alone is not 
of itself a test of poetry, for such a test would 
exclude Empedocles and Lucretius ; it would make 

1 Butcher, pp. 117, 118. 2 p^e;. i. g. 



II.] THE GENEKAL THEORY OF POETRY 41 

Virgil a poet in the u^neid, and not a poet in the 
Georgics. All matters are proper material for the 
poet, as Horace says, if they are treated poetically ; 
and although the imitation of men and women may 
seem to be of higher importance for us who are ; 
men and women, the imitation of human life is no 
more the poet's end than the imitation of anything 
else.^ This portion of Fracastoro's argument may 
be called apologetic, for the imitation of human 
actions as a test of poetry would exclude most of 
his own poems,^ such as his famous De Morho \ 
Gallico (1529), written before the influence of ' 
Ajcistotle was felt in anything but the mere ex- 
ternal forms of creative literature. For Fracastoro, 
all things poetically treated become poetry, and 
Aristotle himself^ says that everything becomes 
pleasant when correctly imitated. So that not the 
mere composition of verse, but the Platonic rap- 
ture, the delight in the true and essential beauty of 
things, is for Fracastoro the test of poetic power. 

Varchi, on the other hand, is more in accord with 
Aristotle, in conceiving of " action," the subject- , 
matter of poetry, as including the passions and j 
habits of mind as well as the merely external 
actions of mankind. By passions Varchi means 
those mental perturbations which impel us to an 
action at any particular time {irdOrD ; while by 
manners, or habits of mind, he means those mental 
qualities which distinguish one man or one class 
of men from another {rid-q). The exclusion of the 

1 Fracastoro, i. 335 sq. 3 ji^qi^ j. h. 

2 Cf. Castelvetro, Poetica, p. 27 sq. 



42 LITEKARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

emotional or introspective side of human life would 
leave all lyric and, in fact, all subjective verse out 
of the realms of poetry ; and it was therefore essen- 
tial, in an age in which Petrarch was worshipped, 
that the subjective side of poetry should receive 
its justification.^ There is also in Varchi a most in- 
teresting comparison between the arts of poetry and 
painting.^ The basis of his distinction is Horace's 
ut pictura poesis, doubtless founded on the parallel 
of Simonides preserved for us by Plutarch; and 
this distinction, which regarded painting as silent 
poetry, and poetry as painting in language, may be 
considered almost the keynote of Eenaissance criti- 
cism, continuing even up to the time of Lessing. 

In Capriano's Bella Vera Poetica (1555) poetry is 
given a preeminent place among all the arts, because 
it does not merely deal with actions or with the ob- 
jects of any single sense. For Capriano, poetry is 
an ideal representation of life, and as such " vere 
nutrice e amatrice del nostro bene."^ All sensuous 
or comprehensible objects are capable of being imi- 
tated by various arts. The nobler of the imitative 
arts are concerned with the objects of the nobler 
senses, while the ignobler arts are concerned with 
the objects of the senses of taste, touch, and smell. 
Poetry is the finest of all the arts, because it com- 
prehends in itself all the faculties and powers of 
the other arts, and can in fact imitate anything, as, 
for example, the form of a lion, its color, its feroc- 
ity, its roar, and the like. It is also the highest 
form of art because it makes use of the most effi- 
iCy.ASegni,1581,cap.i. 2Varchi,p. 2275g. s Capriano, cap. ii. 



II.] THE GENERAL THEORY OF POETRY 43 

cacious means of imitation, namely, words, and es- 
pecially since these receive the additional beauty and 
power of rhythm. Accordingly, Capriano divides 
poets into two classes : natural poets, who describe the 
things of nature, and moral poets (such as epic and 
tragic poets), who aim at presenting moral lessons 
and indicating the uses of life; and of these two 
classes the moral poets are to be rated above the 
natural poets. 

But if all things are the objects of poetic imita- 
tion, the poet must know everything ; he must have 
studied nature as well as life; and, accordingly, 
Lionardi, in his dialogues on poetic imitation (1554), 
says that to be a good poet, one must be a good 
historian, a good orator, and a good natural and 
moral philosopher as well;^ and Bernardo Tasso 
asserts that a thorough acquaintance with the art 
of poetry is only to be gained from the study of 
Aristotle's Poetics, combined with a knowledge of 
philosophy and the various arts and sciences, and 
vast experience of the world.^ The Benaissance, with 
its humanistic tendencies, never quite succeeded 
in discriminating between erudition and genius. 
Scaliger says that nothing which proceeds from 
solid learning can ever be out of place in poetry, 
and Fracastoro (1555) and Tomitano (1545) both 
affirm that the good poet and the good orator must 
essentially be learned scholars and philosophers. 
Scaliger therefore distinguishes three classes of 
poets, — first, the theological poets, such as Or- 
pheus and Amphion; secondly, the philosophical 
1 Lionardi, p. 43 sg. 2 Lettere, ii. 525. 



44 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

poets, of two sorts, natural poets, such as Empedo- 
cles and Lucretius, and moral poets, who again are 
either political, as Solon and Tyrtaeus, economic, as 
Hesiod, or common, as Phocyllides; and, thirdly, 
the ordinary poets who imitate human life.^ The 
last are divided according to the usual Renaissance 
classification into dramatic, narrative, and common 
or mixed. Scaliger's classification is employed by 
Sir Philip Sidney ; ^ and a very similar subdivision 
is given by Minturno.^ 

The treatment of Castelvetro, in his commentary 
on the Poetics (1570), is at times much more in ac- 
cord with the true Aristotelian conception than 
most of the other Eenaissance writers. While fol- 
lowing Aristotle in asserting that verse is not of the 
essence of poetry, he shows that Aristotle himself 
by no means intended to class as poetry works that 
imitated in prose, for this was not the custom of 
Hellenic art. Prose is not suited to imitative or 
imaginative subjects, for we expect themes treated 
in prose to be actual facts."* " Verse does not dis- 
tinguish poetry," says Castelvetro, " but clothes and 
adorns it ; and it is as improper for poetry to be 
written in prose, or history in verse, as it is for 
women to use the garments of men, and for men to 
wear the garments of women." ^ The test of poetry 
therefore is not the metre but the material. This 
approximates to Aristotle's own view ; since while 
imitation is what distinguishes the poetic art, Aris- 

1 Scaliger, Poet. i. 2. * Castelvetro, Poetical p. 23 sq. 

2 Defense, pp. 10, 11. 5 Ihid. p. 190. 
* De Poeta, p. 53 sq. 



II.] THE GENERAL THEORY OF POETRY 45 

totle, by limiting it to the imitation of human life, 
was, after all, making the matter the test of poetry. 
Castelvetro, however, arrives at this conclusion 
on different grounds. Science he regards as not 
suitable material for poetry, and accordingly such 
writers as Lucretius and Fracastoro are not poets. 
They are good artists, perhaps, or good philosophers, 
but not poets ; for the poet does not attempt to dis- 
cover the truth of nature, but to imitate the deeds 
of men, and to bring delight to his audience by 
means of this imitation. Moreover, poetry, as will 
be seen later, is intended to give delight to the 
populace, the untrained multitude, to whom the 
sciences and the arts are dead letters ; ^ if we con- 
cede these to be fit themes for poetry, then poetry 
is either not meant to delight, or not meant for the 
ordinary people, but is intended for instruction and 
for those only who are versed in sciences and arts. 
Moreover, comparing poetry with history, Castel- 
vetro finds that they resemble each other in many 
points, but are not identical. Poetry follows, as it 
were, in the footsteps of history, but differs from it 
in that history deals with what has happened, poetry 
with what is probable ; and things that have hap- 
pened, though probable, are never considered in 
poetry as probable, but always as things that have 
happened. History, accordingly, does not regard 
verisimihtude or necessity, but only truth ; poetry 
must take care to establish the probability of its 
subject in verisimilitude and necessity, since it 
cannot regard truth. Castelvetro in common with 
1 Cf. T. Tasso, xi. 51. 



46 LITERARY €RITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

most of the critics of the Eenaissance seems to mis- 
conceive the full meaning of ideal truth ; for to the 
Renaissance — nay, even to Shakespeare, if we are 
to consider as his own various phrases which he has 
put into the mouths of his dramatic characters — 
truth was regarded as coincident with fact; and 
nothing that was not actual fact, however subor- 
dinated to the laws of probability and necessity, 
was ever called truth. 

It is in keeping with this conception of the rela- 
tions between history and poetry, that Castelvetro 
should differ not only from Aristotle, but from most 
' of the critics of his own time, in asserting that the 
order of the poetic narrative may be the same as 
that of historical narrative. " In telling a story," 
he says, " we need not trouble ourselves whether it 
has beginning, middle, and end, but only whether 
it is fitted to its true purpose, that is, to delight its 
auditors by the narration of certain circumstances 
which could possibly happen but have not actually 
happened."^ Here the only vital distinction be- 
tween history and poetry is that the incidents re- 
counted in history have once happened, while those 
recounted in poetry have never actually happened, 
or the matter will not be regarded as poetry. Aris- 
totle's fundamental requirement of the unity of the 
fable is regarded as unessential, and is simply ob- 
served in order to show the poet's ingenuity. This 
notion of poetic ingenuity is constant throughout 
Castelvetro's commentary. Thus he explains Aris- 
totle's statement that poetry is more philosophic 
1 Poetica, p. 158. 



II.] THE GENERAL THEORY OF POETRY 47 

than history — more philosophic, according to Cas- 
telvetro, in the sense of requiring more thought, 
■more speculation in its composition — by showing 
that it is a more difficult and more ingenious labor 
to invent things that could possibly happen, than 
merely to repeat things that have actually hap- 
pened.^ 

III. The Function of Poetry 

According to Strabo, it will be remembered, the 
object or function of poetry is pleasurable instruc- 
tion in reference to character, emotion, action. 
This occasions the inquiry as to what is the func- 
tion of the poetic art, and, furthermore, what are 
its relations to morality. The starting-point of all 
discussions on this subject in the Eenaissance was 
the famous verse of Horace : — 

" Aut prodesse volunt aut delectare poetae." * 

This line suggests that the function of poetry may 
be to please, or to instruct, or both to please and [ 
instruct; and every one of the writers of the Ee- 
naissance takes one or other of these three posi- 
tions. Aristotle, as we know, regarded poetry as 
an imitation of human life, for the purpose of giv- 
ing a certain refined pleasure to the reader or 
hearer. " The end of the fine arts is to give pleas- % 
ure (tt/oos ri^ovriv), or rational enjoyment (Trpos * 
8iay(oy>;V)." ^ It has already been said that poetry, 
in so far as it is an imitation of human life, and 

1 Poetica, p. 191. 2 Ars Poet. 333, 3 iputcher, p. 185. 



48 LITERAEY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

attempts to be true to human life in its ideal as- 
pects, must fundamentally be moral ; but to give 
moral or scientific instruction is in no way the end 
or function of poetry. It will be seen that the 
Eenaissance was in closer accord with Horace than 
with Aristotle, in requiring for the most part the 
. utile as well as the dulce in poetry. 

For Daniello, one of the earliest critical writers 
of the century, the function of the poet is to teach 
and delight. As the aim of the orator is to per- 
suade, and the aim of the physician to cure, so the 
aim of the poet is equally to teach and delight; 
and unless he teaches and delights he cannot be 
called a poet, even as one who does not persuade 
cannot be called an orator, or one who does not 
cure, a physician.^ But beyond profitableness and 
beauty, the poet must carry with him a certain 
persuasion, which is one of the highest functions 
of poetry, and which consists in moving and af- 
fecting the reader or hearer with the very passions 
depicted ; but the poet must be moved first, before 
he can move others.^ Here Daniello is renewing 

Horace's 

; "Si vis me flere, dolendum est 

I Primum ipsi tibi, ' ' — 

a sentiment echoed by poets as different as Vau- 
quelin, Boileau, and Lamartine. 

Fracastoro, however, attempts a deeper analysis 
of the proper function of the poetic art. What 
is the aim of the poet ? Not merely to give de- 
light, for the fields, the stars, men and women, 
1 Daniello, p. 25. 2 ma. p, 40. 



II.] THE GENERAL THEORY OF POETRY 49 

the objects of poetic imitation themselves do that; 
and poetry, if it did no more, could not be said to 
have any reason for existing. Nor is it merely to 
teach and delight, as Horace says ; for the descrip- 
tions of countries, peoples, and armies, the scientific 
digressions and the historical events, which consti- 
tute the instructive side of poetry, are derived from 
cosmographers, scientists, and historians, who teach 
and delight as much as poets do. What, then, is 
the function of the poet? It is, as has already 
been pointed out, to describe the essential beauty 
of things, to aim at the universal and ideal, and 
to perform this function with every possible ac- 
companiment of beautiful speech, thus affecting 
the minds of men in the direction of excellence 
and beauty. Portions of Fracastoro's argument 
have been alluded to before, and it will suffice 
here to state his own summing up of the aim of 
the poet, which is this, " Delectare et prodesse 
imitando in unoquoque maxima et pulcherrima per 
genus dicendi simpliciter pulchrum ex convenien- 
tibus."^ This is a mingling of the Horatian and / 
Platonic conceptions of poetic art. 

By other critics a more practical function was 
given to poetry. Giraldi Cintio asserts that it is 
the poet's aim to condemn vice and to praise vir- 
tue, and Maggi says that poets aim almost ex- 
clusively at benefiting the mind. Poets who, on 
the contrary, treat of obscene matters for the cor- 
ruption of youth, may be compared with infamous 
physicians who give their patients deadly poison 
1 Fracastoro, i. 363. 



50 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

in the guise of wholesome medicine. Horace and 
Aristotle, according to Maggi, are at one on this 
point, for in the definition of tragedy Aristotle 
ascribes to it a distinctly useful purpose, and what- 
ever delight is obtainable is to be regarded as a 
result of this moral function; for Maggi and the 
Eenaissance critics in general would follow the 
Elizabethan poet who speaks of " delight, the fruit 
of virtue dearly loved." Muzio, in his versified Arte 
Poetica (1555), regards the end of poetry as pleasure 
and profit, and the pleasurable aim of poetry as 
attained by variety, for the greatest poems contain 
every phase of life and art. 

It has been seen that Varchi classed poetry with 
rational philosophy. The end of all arts and sci- 
ences is to make human life perfect and happy; 
but they differ in their modes of producing this 
result. Philosophy attains its end by teaching; 
rhetoric, by persuasion ; history, by narration ; poe- 
try, by imitation or representation. The aim of 
the poet, therefore, is to make the human soul per- 
fect and happy, and it is his office to imitate, that 
is, to invent and represent, things which render 
men virtuoas, and consequently happy. Poetry 
attains this end more perfectly than any of the 
other arts or sciences, because it does so, not by 
means of precept, but by means of example. There 
are various ways of making men virtuous, — by 
teaching them what vice is and what virtue is, 
which is the province of ethics; by actually chas- 
tising vices and rewarding virtues, which is the 
province of law; or by example, that is, by the 



11.] THE GENERAL THEORY OF POETRY 51 

representation of virtuous men receiving suitable 
rewards for their virtue, and of vicious men receiv- 
ing suitable punishments, which is the province of 
poetry. This last method is the most efficacious, 
because it is accompanied by delight. For men 
either can not or will not take the trouble to study 
sciences and virtues — nay, do not even like to be 
told what they should or should not do ; but in hear- 
ing or reading poetic examples, not only is there no 
trouble, but there is the greatest delight, and no 
one can help being moved by the representation of 
characters who are rewarded or punished according 
to an ideal justice. 

For Yarchi, then, as for Sir Philip Sidney later, 
the high importance of poetry is to be found in the 
fact that it teaches morality better than any other 
art, and the reason is that its instrument is not 
precept but example, which is the most delightful 
and hence the most efficacious of all means. The 
function of poetry is, therefore, a moral one, and it 
consists in removing the vices of men and incit- 
ing them to virtue. This twofold moral object of 
poetry — the removal of vices, which is passive, 
and the incitement to virtue, which is active — is 
admirably attained, for example, by Dante in his 
Divina Commedia; for in the Inferno evil men are 
so fearfully punished that we resolve to flee from 
every form of vice, and in the Paradiso virtuous 
men are so gloriously rewarded that we resolve to 
imitate every one of their perfections. This is the 
expression of the extreme view of poetic justice; 
and while it is in keeping with the common senti- 



52 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

inent of tlie Eenaissance, it is of course entirely 
un-Aristotelian. 

Scaliger's point of view is in accord with the 
common Eenaissance tradition. Poetry is imitatioiL, 
but imitation is not the end of poetry. Imitation 
for its own sake — that is, art for art's sake — re- 
ceives no encouragement from Scaliger. The pur- 
pose of poetry is to teach delightfully (docere cum 
delectatione) ; and, therefore, not imitation, as Aris- 
totle says, but delightful instruction, is the test of 
poetry.^ Minturno (1559) adds a third element to 
that of instruction and of delight.^ The function 
of poetry is not only to teach and delight, but also 
to move, that is, beyond instruction and delight 
the poet must impel certain passions in the reader 
or hearer, and incite the mind to admiration of 
what is described.^ An ideal hero may be repre- 
sented in a poem, but the poem is futile unless it 
excites the reader to admiration of the hero de- 
picted. Accordingly, it is the peculiar office of the 
poet to move admiration for great men; for the 
orator, the philosopher, and the historian need not 
necessarily do so, but no one who does not incite 
this admiration can really be called a poet. 

This new element of admiration is the logical 
consequence of the Renaissance position that phi- 
losophy teaches by precept, but poetry by example, 
and that in this consists its superior ethical efficacy. 
In Seneca's phrase, "longum iter per prsecepta, 

1 Scaliger, Poet. vi. ii. 2. 

2 Be Poeta, p. 102. Cf. Scaliger, Poet, iii. 96. 

3 De Poeta, p. 11. 



II.] THE GENERAL THEORY OE POETRY 53 

breve per exempla." If poetry, therefore, attains 
its end by means of example, it follows that to 
arrive at this end the poet must incite in the 
reader an admiration of the example, or the ethical 
aim of poetry will not be accomplished. Poetry 
is more than a mere passive expression of truth 
in the most pleasurable manner; it becomes like 
oratory an active exhortation to virtue, by attempt- 
ing to create in the reader's mind a strong desire to 
be like the heroes he is reading about. The poet 
does not tell what vices are to be avoided and what 
virtues are to be imitated, but sets before the 
reader or hearer the most perfect types of the 
various virtues and vices. It is, in Sidney's phrase 
(a phrase apparently borrowed from Minturno), 
"that feigning notable images of virtues, vices, or 
what else, with that delightful instruction, which 
;must be the right describing note to know a poet 
by." Dryden, a century later, seems to be insisting 
upon this same principle of admiration when he 
says that it is the work of the poet " to affect the 
soul, and excite the passions, and above all to move 
admiration, which is the delight of serious plays." -^ 
But Minturno goes even further than this. If 
the poet is fundamentally a teacher of virtue, it 
follows that he must be a virtuous man himself; 
and in pointing this out, Minturno has given the 
first complete expression in modern times of the 
consecrated conception of the poet's office. As no 
form of knowledge and no moral excellence is for- 
eign to the poet, so at bottom he is the truly wise 
1 Essay of Dramatic Poesy, p. 104. 



54 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

and good man. The poet may, in fact, be defined 
as a good man skilled in language and imitation; 
not only ought he to be a good man, but no one will 
be a good poet unless he is so.^ This conception of 
the moral nature of the poet may be traced hence- 
forth throughout modern times. It is to be found 
in Eonsard ^ and other French and Italian writers ; 
it is especially noticeable in English literature, and 
is insisted on by Ben Jonson,^ Milton,* Shaftesbury,* 
Coleridge,^ and Shelley.' In this idea Plato's praise 
of the philosopher, as well as Cicero's and Quintil- 
ian's praise of the orator, was by the Renaissance 
transferred to the poet ; ^ but the conception itself 
goes back to a passage in Strabo's Geography, a work 
well known to sixteenth-century scholars. This 
passage is as follows : — 

"Can we possibly imagine that the genius, power, and 
excellence of a real poet consist in aught else than the just 
imitation of life in formed discourse and numbers? But 
how should he be that just imitator of life, whilst he himself 
knows not its measures, nor how to guide himself by judg- 
ment and understanding ? For we have not surely the same 
notion of the poet's excellence as of the ordinary crafts- 
man's, the subject of whose art is senseless stone or timber, 

1 De Poeta, p. 79. 

2 (Euvres, vii. 318. 

3 Works, i. 333. 

* Prose Works, ill. 118. 

5 CharacterisHcks, 1711, i. 207. 

6 H. C. Kobinson, Diary, May 29, 1812, " Coleridge talked of 
the impossibility of being a good poet without being a good 
man." 

5" Defence of Poetry, p. 42. 

8 Minturno plainly says as much, De Poeta, p. 105. 



II.] THE GENERAL THEORY OF POETRY 55 

without life, dignity, or beauty ; whilst the poet's art turn- 
ing principally on men and manners, he has his virtues and 
excellence as poet naturally annexed to human excellence, 
and to the worth and dignity of man, insomuch that it is 
impossible he should be a gi-eat and worthy poet who is not 
first a worthy and good man." i 

Another writer of tlie sixteenth, century, Bernardo 
Tasso, tells us that in his poem of the Amadigi he 
has aimed at delight rather than profitable instruc- 
tion.2 u J \^2,YQ spent most of my efforts/' he says, 
"in attempting to please, as it seems to me that 
this is more necessary, and also more difficult to 
attain ; for we find by experience that many poets 
may instruct and benefit us very much, but cer- 
tainly give us very little delight." This agrees 
with what one of the sanest of English critics, John 
Dryden (1668), has said of verse, " I am satisfied 
if it caused delight, for delight is the chief if not 
the only end of poesie ; instruction can be admitted 
but in the second place, for poesie only instructs as 
it delights." ^ 

It is this same end which Castelvetro (1570) 
ascribes to poetic art. For Castelvetro, as in a 
lesser degree for Eobortelli also, the end of poetry 
is delight, and delight alone.^ This, he asserts, is 
the position of Aristotle, and if utility is to be con- 
ceded to poetry at all, it is merely as an accident, 
as in the tragic purgation of terror and compassion.^ 

1 Geog. i. ii. 5, as cited by Shaftesbury. 

2 Letterey ii. 195. 

8 Essay of Dramatic Poesy, p. 104. 

4 Cf. Piccolomini, p. 369. 

5 Castelvetro, Poetica, p. 505. Cf. Twining, ii. 449, 450. 



56 LITERAKY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

But he goes further than Aristotle would have been 
willing to go ; for poetry, according to Castelvetro, 
is intended not merely to please, but to please the 
\ populace, in fact everybody, even the vulgar mob.^ 
^On this he insists throughout his commentary; 
indeed, as will be seen later, it is on this conception 
that his theory of the drama is primarily based. 
But it may be confidently asserted that Aristotle 
would have willingly echoed the conclusion of 
Shakespeare, as expressed in Hamlet, that the cen- 
sure of one of the judicious must o'erweigh a whole 
theatre of others. At the same time, Castelvetro's 
conception is in keeping with a certain modern feel- 
ing in regard to the meaning of poetic art. Thus 
a recent writer regards literature as aiming " at 
the pleasure of the greatest possible number of the 
nation rather than instruction and practical effects," 
and as applying " to general rather than specialized 
knowledge." ^ There is, then, in Castelvetro's argu- 
ment this modicum of truth, that poetry appeals to 
no specialized knowledge, but that its function is, 
as Coleridge says, to give a definite and immediate 
pleasure. 

Torquato Tasso, as might be expected, regards 
poetry in a more highly ideal sense. His concep- 
tion of the function of poets and of the poetic art 
may be explained as follows : The universe is beauti- 
ful in itself, because beauty is a ray from the Divine 
splendor; and hence art should seek to approach 
as closely as possible to nature, and to catch and 

1 Poetica, p. 29. 

2 Posnett, cited by Cook, p. 247. 



II.] THE GENERAL THEORY OF POETRY 57 

express this natural beauty of the world.^ Real 
beauty, however, is not so called because of any 
usefulness it may possess, but is primarily beautiful 
in itself; for the beautiful is what pleases every 
one, just as the good is what every one desires.^ 
Beauty is therefore the flower of the good (quasi un 
fiore del buono) ; it is the circumference of the 
circle of which the good is the centre, and accord- 
ingly, poetry, as an expression of this beauty, imi- 
tates the outward show of life in its general 
aspects. Poetry is therefore an imitation of human 
actions, made for the guidance of life ; and its end 
is delight, ordinato al giovamento.^ It must essen- 
tially delight, either because delight is its aim, or 
because delight is the necessary means of effecting 
the ethical end of art."^ Thus, for example, heroic 
poetry consists of imitation and allegory, the func- 
tion of the former being to cause delight, and that 
of the latter to give instruction and guidance in 
life. But since difficult or obscure conceits rarely 
delight, and since the poet does not appeal to the 
learned only, but to the people, just as the orator 
does, the poet's idea must be, if not popular in the 
ordinary sense of the word, at least intelligible to 
the people. Now the people will not study difficult 
problems ; but poetry, by appealing to them on the 
side of pleasure, teaches them whether they will or 
no; and this constitutes the true effectiveness of 
poetry, for it is the most delightful, and hence the 
most valuable, of teachers.^ 

1 Opere, viii. 26 sq. » Ibid. xii. 13. 6 Ibid. xii. 212. 

2 Ibid. ix. 123. * Ibid. xi. 50. 



58 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

Such, then, are the various conceptions of the 
function of poetry, as held by the critics of the 
Kenaissance. On the whole, it may be said that at 
bottom the conception was an ethical one, for, with 
the exception of such a revolutionary spirit as 
Castelvetro, by most theorists it was as an effective 
guide to life that poetry was chiefly valued. Even 
when delight was admitted as an end, it was simply 
because of its usefulness in' effecting the ethical 
aim. 

In concluding this chapter, it may be well to 
say a few words, and only a few, upon the classi- 
fication of poetic forms. There were during the 
E-enaissance numerous attempts at distinguishing 
these forms, but on the whole all of them are fun- 
damentally equivalent to that of Minturno, who 
recognizes three genres, — the lyric or melic, the 
dramatic or scenic, and the epic or narrative. 
This classification is essentially that of the Greeks, 
and it has lasted down to this very day. With 
lyric poetry this essay is scarcely concerned, for 
during the Eenaissance there was no systematic 
lyric theory. Those who discussed it at all gave 
most of their attention to its formal structure, its 
style, and especially the conceit it contained. The 
model of all lyrical poetry was Petrarch, and it was 
in accordance with the lyrical poet's agreement or 
disagreement with the Petrarchan method that he 
was regarded as a success or a failure. Muzio's 
critical poem (1551) deals almost entirely with 
lyrical verse, and there are discussions on this sub- 
ject in the works of Trissino, Equicola, Euscelli, 



II.] THE GENERAL THEORY OF POETRY 59 

Scaliger, and Minturno. But the real question at 
issue in all these discussions is merely that of 
external form, and it is with the question of prin- 
ciples, in so far as they regard literary criticism, 
that this essay is primarily concerned. The theory 
of dramatic and epic poetry, being fundamental, 
will therefore receive almost exclusive attention. 



CHAPTER III 

THE THEORY OF THE DRAMA 

Aristotle's definition of tragedy is the basis of 
the Renaissance theory of tragedy. That definition 
is as follows : " Tragedy is an imitation of an ac- 
tion that is serious, complete, and of a certain mag- 
nitude ; in language embellished with each kind of 
artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in 
separate parts of the play ; in the form of action, 
not of narration ; through pity and fear effecting the 
proper katharsis or purgation of these emotions."^ 

To expand this definition, tragedy, in common 
with all other form^ of poetry, is the imitation of 
an action ; but the action of tragedy is distinguished 
from that of comedy in being grave and serious. 
The action is complete, in so far as it possesses per- 
fect unity ; and in length it must be of the proper 
magnitude. By embellished language, Aristotle 
means language into which rhythm, harmony, and 
song enter; and by the remark that the several 
kinds are to be found in separate parts of the play, 
he means that some parts of tragedy are rendered 
through the medium of verse alone, while others 
receive the aid of song. Moreover, tragedy is dis- 

1 Poet. vi. 2. 
60 



CHAP. III.] THE THEORY OF THE DRAMA 61 

tinguished from epic poetry by being in the form 
of action instead of that of narration. The last por- 
tion of Aristotle's definition describes the peculiar 
function of tragic performance. 

I. The Subject of Tragedy 

Tragedy is the imitation of a serious action, that 
is, an action both grave and great, or, as the six- 
teenth century translated the word, illustrious. 
Now, what constitutes a serious action, and what 
actions are not suited to the dignified character of 
tragedy? Daniello (1536) distinguishes tragedy 
from comedy in that the comic poets " deal with the 
most familiar and domestic, not to say base and 
vile operations ; the tragic poets, with the deaths 
of high kings and the ruins of great empires." ^ 
Whichever of these matters the poet selects should 
be treated without admixture of any other form; if 
he resolves to treat of grave matters, mere loveli- 
ness should be excluded ; if of themes of loveliness, 
he should exclude all grave themes. Here, at the 
very beginning of dramatic discussion, the strict 
separation of themes or genres is advocated in as 
formal a manner as ever during the period of clas- 
sicism ; and this was never deviated from, at least 
in theory, by any of the writers of the sixteenth 
century. Moreover, according to Daniello, the dig- 
nified character of tragedy demands that all un- 
seemly, cruel, impossible, or ignoble incidents should 
be excluded from the stage; while even comedy 

2 1 Daniello, p. 34. 



62 LITERAKY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

should not attempt to represent any lascivious act.^ 
This was merely a deduction from Senecan tragedy 
and the general practice of the classics. 

There is, in Daniello's theory of tragedy, no sin- 
gle Aristotelian element, and it was not until about 
a decade later that Aristotle's theory of tragedy 
played any considerable part in the literary criti- 
cism of the sixteenth century. In 1543, however, 
the Poetics had already become a part of university 
study, for Giraldi Cintio, in his Discorso sulle Com- 
edie e sulle Tragedie, written in that year, says that 
it was a regular academic exercise to compare some 
Greek tragedy, such as the (Edvpus of Sophocles, 
with a tragedy of Seneca on the same subject, using 
the Poetics of Aristotle as a dramatic text-book.^ 
Giraldi distinguishes tragedy from comedy on some- 
what the same grounds as Daniello. " Tragedy and 
comedy," he says, " agree in that they are both imi- 
tations of an action, but they differ in that the 
former imitates the illustrious and royal, the latter 
the popular and civil. Hence Aristotle says that 
comedy imitates the worse sort of actions, not that 
they are vicious and criminal, but that, as regards 
nobility, they are worse when compared with royal 
actions." Giraldi's position is made clear by his 
further statement that the actions of tragedy are 
called illustrious, not because they are virtuous or 
vicious, but merely because they are the actions 
of people of the highest rank.^ 

This conception of the serious action of tragedy, 

1 Cf. Horace, Ars Poet. 182 sq. 3 ij^ia. ii. 30. 

2 Giraldi Cintio, ii. 6. 



III.] THE THEOKY OF THE DRAMA 63 

whicli makes its dignity the result of the rank of 
those who are its actors, and thus regards rank as 
the real distinguishing mark between comedy and 
tragedy, was not only common throughout the Re- 
naissance, but even throughout the whole period of 
classicism, and had an extraordinary effect on the 
modern drama, especially in France. Thus Dacier 
(1692) says that it is not necessary that the action 
be illustrious and important in itself : " On the con- 
trary, it may be very ordinary or common ; but it 
must be so by the quality of the persons who act. 
. . . The greatness of these eminent men renders 
the action great, and their reputation makes it cred- 
ible and possible." ^ 

Again, Robortelli (1548) maintains that tragedy 
deals only with the greater sort of men (prcestanti- 
ores), because the fall of men of such rank into 
misery and disgrace produces greater commiseration 
(which i as will be seen, one of the functions of 
tragedy) ti. ^n the fall of men of merely ordinary 
rank. Anot. ^r commentator on the Poetics, Maggi 
(1550), gives a slightly different explanation of 
Aristotle's meaning. Maggi asserts that Aristotle,^ 
in saying that comedy deals with the worse and 
tragedy with the better sort of men, means to dis- 
tinguish between those whose rank is lower or 
higher than that of ordinary men; comedy dealing 
with slaves, tradesmen, maidservants, buffoons, and 
other low people, tragedy with kings and heroes.^ 
This explanation is defended on grounds similar to 

1 Cited by Butcher, p. 220. s Maggi, p. 64. 

2 Poet. iv. 7. 



64 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

those given by Eobortelli, that is, the change from 
felicity to infelicity is greater and more noticeable 
in the greatest men.J 

This conception of the rank of the characters as 
the distinguishing mark between tragedy and com- 
edy is, it need not be said, entirely un- Aristotelian. 
" Aristotle does undoubtedly hold," says Professor 
Butcher, " that actors in tragedy ought to be illus- 
trious by birth and position. The narrow and triv- 
ial life of obscure persons cannot give scope for a 
great and significant action, one of tragic conse- 
quence. But nowhere does he make outward rank 
the distinguishing feature of tragic as opposed to 
comic representation. Moral nobility is what he 
demands; and this — on the French stage, or at 
least with French critics — is transformed into an 
inflated dignity, a courtly etiquette and decorum, 
which seemed proper to high rank. The instance 
is one of many in which literary critics have wholly 
confounded the teaching of Aristotle." ^ This dis- 
tinction, then, though common up to the end of the 
eighteenth century, is not to be found in Aristotle ; 
but the fact is, that a similar distinction can be 
traced, throughout the Middle Ages, throughout 
classical antiquity, back almost to the time of Aris- 
totle himself. 

The grammarian, Diomedes, has preserved the 
definition of tragedy formulated by Theophrastus, 
Aristotle's successor as head of the Peripatetic 
school. According to this definition, tragedy is 

1 Maggi, p. 154. 

2 Butcher, p. 220 sq. 



III.] THE THEORY OF THE DRAMA 65 

" a change in the fortune of a hero." ^ A Greek 
definition of comedy preserved by Diomedes, and 
ascribed to Theophrastus also/ speaks of comedy 
as dealing with private and civil fortunes, without 
the element of danger. This seems to have been 
the accepted Eoman notion of comedy. In the 
treatise of Euanthius-Donatus, comedy is said to 
deal with the common fortunes of men, to begin 
turbulently, but to end tranquilly and happily ; 
tragedy, on the other hand, has only mighty per- 
sonages, and ends terribly ; its subject is often his- 
torical, while that of comedy is always invented by 
the poet.^ The third book of Diomedes's Ars Gram- 
matica, based on Suetonius's tractate De Poetis (writ- 
ten in the second century a.d.), distinguishes tragedy 
from comedy in that only heroes, great leaders, and 
kings are introduced in tragedy, while in comedy 
the characters are humble and private persons ; in 
the former, lamentations, exiles, bloodshed predom- 
inate, in the latter, love affairs and seductions.* 
Isidore of Seville, in the seventh century, says very 
much the same thing: "Comic poets treat of the 
acts of private men, while tragic poets treat of 
public matters and the histories of kings ; tragic 
themes are based on sorrowful affairs, comic themes 
on joyful ones."^ In another place he speaks of 
tragedy as dealing with the ancient deeds and mis- 

1 Butcher, p. 219, n. 1. — Miiller, ii. 394, attempts to harmonize 
the definition of Theophrastus with that of Aristotle. 

2 Egger, Hist, de la Critique, p. 344, n. 2. 

3 Cloetta, i. 29. Cf. Antiphanes, cited by Egger, p. 72. 
* Cloetta, p. 30. 

« Etymol. viii. 7, 6. 



66 LITEllAEY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

deeds of infamous kings, and of comedy as dealing 
with the actions of private men, and with the de- 
filement of maidens and the love affairs of strum- 
pets.^ In the Catholicon of Johannes Januensis de 
Balbis (1286) tragedy and comedy are distinguished 
on similar grounds : tragedy deals only with kings 
and princes, comedy with private citizens ; the style 
of the former is elevated, that of the latter humble ; 
comedy begins sorrowfully and ends joyfully, trag- 
edy begins joyfully and ends miserably and terribly.^ 
For Dante, any poem written in an elevated and 
sublime style, beginning happily and ending in mis- 
ery and terror, is a tragedy ; his own great vision, 
written as it is in the vernacular, and beginning in 
hell and ending gloriously in paradise, he calls a 
comedy.^ 

It appears, therefore, that during the post-classic 
period and throughout the Middle Ages, comedy 
and tragedy were distinguished on any or all of the 
following grounds : — 

i. The characters in tragedy are kings, princes, 
or great leaders ; those in comedy, humble persons 
and private citizens. 

ii. Tragedy deals with great and terrible actions ; 
comedy with familiar and domestic actions. 

iii. Tragedy begins happily and ends terribly; 
comedy begins rather turbulently and ends joy- 
fully. 

1 Etymol. xviii. 45 and 46. 

2 Cloetta, p. 28, and p. 31 sq. 

8 Epist. xi, 10. Cf. Gelli's Lectures on the Divine Comedy, 
ed. Negroni, 1887, i. 37 sq. 



III.] THE THEORY OF THE DRAMA 67 

iv. The style and diction of tragedy are elevated 
and sublime ; while those of comedy are humble and 
colloquial. 

V. The subjects of tragedy are generally histori- 
cal ; those of comedy are always invented by the 
poet. 

vi. Comedy deals largely with love and seduc- 
tion J tragedy with exile and bloodshed. 

This, then, was the tradition that shaped the un- 
Aristotelian conception of the distinctions between 
comedy and tragedy, which persisted throughout 
and even beyond the Renaissance. Giraldi Cintio 
has followed most of these traditional distinctions, 
but he is in closer accord with Aristotle ^ when he 
asserts that the tragic as well as the comic plot 
may be purely imaginary and invented by the 
poet.^ He explains the traditional conception that 
the tragic fable should be historical, on the ground 
that as tragedy deals with the deeds of kings and 
illustrious men, it would not be probable that re- 
markable actions of such great personages should 
be left unrecorded in history, whereas the private 
events treated in comedy could hardly be known 
to all. Giraldi, however, asserts that it does not 
matter whether the tragic poet invents his story or 
not, so long as it follows the law of probability. 
The poet should choose an action that is probable 
and dignified, that does not need the intervention 
of a god in the unravelling of the plot, that does not 
occupy much more than the space of a day, and 
that can be represented on the stage in three or 
1 Poet. ix. 5-9. 2 Giraldi Cintio, ii. 14. 



6S LITERARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

four hours.^ In respect to the denouement of 
tragedy, it may be liappy or unhappy, but in 
either case it must arouse pity and terror ; and as 
for the classic notion that no deaths should be rep- 
resented on the stage, Giraldi declares that those 
which are not excessively painful may be repre- 
sented, for they are represented not for the sake of 
commiseration but of justice. The argument here 
centres about Aristotle's phrase iv rw <^avepw OdvaroL,^ 
but the common practice of classicism was based on 
Horace's express prohibition : — 

"Ne pueros coram populo Medea trucidet." ^ 

Giraldi gives it as a universal rule of the drama 
that nothing should be represented on the stage 
which could not with propriety be done in one's 
own house.^ 

Scaliger's treatment of the dramatic forms is par- 
ticularly interesting because of its great influence 
on the neo-classical drama. He defines tragedy as 
an imitation of an illustrious event, ending unhap- 
pily, written in a grave and weighty style, and 
in verse.^ Here he has discarded, or at least 
disregarded, the Aristotelian definition of tragedy, 
in favor of the traditional conception which had 
come down through the Middle Ages. Real trag- 
edy, according to Scaliger, is entirely serious ; and 
although there are a few happy endings in ancient 
tragedy, the unhappy ending is most proper to the 

1 Giraldi Cintio, ii. 20. * Giraldi Cintio, ii. 119. 

2 Poet. xi. 6. 5 Scaliger, Poet. i. 6. 
8 Ars Poet. 182-188. 



III.] THE THEORY OF THE DRAMA 69 

spirit of tragedy itself. Mortes aut exilia — these 
are the fit accompaniments of the tragic catas- 
trophe.^ The action begins tranquilly, but ends 
horribly ; the characters are kings and princes, from 
cities, castles, and camps; the language is grave, 
polished, and entirely opposed to colloquial speech ; 
the aspect of things is troubled, with terrors, men- 
aces, exiles, and deaths on every hand. Taking as 
his model Seneca, whom he rates above all the 
Greeks in majesty,^ he gives as the typical themes 
of tragedy "the mandates of kings, slaughters, de- 
spairs, executions, exiles, loss of parents, parricides, 
incests, conflagrations, battles, loss of sight, tears, 
shrieks, lamentations, burials, epitaphs, and funeral 
songs." ^ Tragedy is further distinguished from 
comedy on the ground that the latter derives its 
argument and its chief characters from history, in- 
venting merely the minor characters ; while comedy 
invents its arguments and all its characters, and 
gives them names of their own. Scaliger distin- 
guishes men, for the purposes of dramatic poetry, 
according to character and rank -, ^ but it would seem 
that he regarded rank alone as the distinguishing 
mark between tragedy and comedy. Thus tragedy 
is made to differ from comedy in three things : in 
the rank of the characters, in the quality of the 
actions, and in their different endings; and as a 
result of these differences, in style also. 

The definition of tragedy given by Minturno, in 
his treatise De Poeta (1559), is merely a paraphrase 

1 Scaliger, i. 11 ; iii. 96. s Ibid. iii. 96. 

2 iijia. vi. 6. 4 ma. i. 13. 



70 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

of Aristotle's. He conceives of tragedy as describ- 
ing casus heroum cuius sibi quisque fortunce fuerit 
fabevj and it thus acts as a warning to men against 
pride of rank, insolence, avarice, lust, and similar 
passions.-^ It is grave and illustrious because its 
characters are illustrious ; and no variety of persons 
or events should be introduced that are not in keeping 
with the calamitous ending. The language through- 
out must be grave and severe ; and Minturno has 
expressed his censure in such matters by the phrase, 
poema amatorio mollique sermone effoe,minat,^ a cen- 
sure which would doubtless apply to a large por- 
tion of classic French tragedy. 

In Castelvetro (1570) we find a far more com- 
plete theory of the drama than had been attempted 
by any of his predecessors. His work is by no 
means a model of what a commentary on Aristotle's 
Poetics should be. In the next century, Dacier, 
whose subservience to Aristotle was even greater 
than that of any of the Italians, accuses Castel- 
vetro of lacking every quality necessary to a good 
interpreter of Aristotle. " He knew nothing," says 
Dacier, "of the theatre, or of character, or of the 
passions; he understood neither the reasons nor 
the method of Aristotle; and he sought rather to 
contradict Aristotle than to explain him."^ The 
fact is that Castelvetro, despite considerable vener- 
ation for Aristotle's authority, often shows remark- 

1 De Poeta, p. 43 sg. 

3 Ibid. p. 173. Cf. Milton's phrase, " vain and amatorious 
poem." 

8 Dacier, 1692, p. xvii. 



III.] THE THEORY OF THE DRAMA 71 

able independence of thought; and so far from 
resting content, in his commentary, with the mere 
explanation of the details of the Poetics, he has 
attempted to deduce from it a more or less com- 
plete theory of poetic art. Accordingly, though 
diverging from many of the details, and still more 
from the spirit of the Poetics, he has, as it were, 
built up a dramatic system of his own, founded 
upon certain modifications and misconceptions of 
the Aristotelian canons. The fundamental idea 
of this system is quite modern ; and it is especially 
interesting because it indicates that by this time 
the drama had become more than a mere academic 
exercise, and was actually regarded as intended 
primarily for representation on the stage. Cas- 
telvetro examines the physical conditions of stage 
representation, and on this bases the requirements 
of dramatic literature. The fact that the drama 
is intended for the stage, that it is to be acted, is at 
the bottom of his theory of tragedy, and it was to 
this notion, as will be seen later, that we are to 
attribute the origin of the unities of time and place. 
But Castelvetro's method brings with it its own 
reductio ad absurdum. For after all, stage rep- 
resentation, while essential to the production of 
dramatic literature, can never circumscribe the 
poetic power or establish its conditions. The con- 
ditions of stage representation change, and must 
change, with the varying conditions of dramatic 
literature and the inventive faculty of poets, for 
truly great art makes, or at least fixes, its own con- 
ditions. Besides, it is with what is permanent and 



72 LITEKARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

universal that the artist — tlie dramatic artist as 
well as the rest — is concerned ; and it is the 
poetic, and not the dramaturgic, element that is 
permanent and universal. " The power of tragedy, 
we may be sure," says Aristotle, "is felt even apart 
from representation and actors;"^ and again: ''The 
plot [of a tragedy] ought to be so constructed that 
even without the aid of the eye any one who is 
told the incidents will thrill with horror and pity 
at the turn of events." ^ 

But what, according to Castelvetro, are the con- 
ditions of stage representation ? The theatre is a 
public place, in which a play is presented before a 
motley crowd, — la moltitudine rozza, — upon a cir- 
cumscribed platform or stage, within a limited 
space of time. To this idea the whole of Castel- 
vetro's dramatic system is conformed. In the first 
place, since the audience may be great in number, 
the theatre must be large, and yet the audience 
must be able to hear the play ; accordingly, verse is 
added, not merely as a delightful accompaniment, 
but also in order that the actors may raise their 
voices without inconvenience and without loss of 
dignity.^ In the second place, the audience is not 
a select gathering of choice spirits, but a motley 
crowd of people, drawn to the theatre for the pur- 
pose of pleasure or recreation; accordingly, ab- 
struse themes, and in fact all technical discussions, 
must be eschewed by the playwright, who is thus 
limited, as we should say to-day, to the elemental 

' 1 Poet. vi. 19. 2 Poet. xiv. 1. 

3 Castelvetro, Poetica, p. 30. 



III.] THE THEORY OF THE DRAMA 73 

passions and interests of man.^ In the tliird place, 
the actors are required to move about on a raised 
and narrow platform ; and this is the reason why 
deaths or deeds of violence, and many other things 
which cannot be acted on such a platform with 
convenience and dignity, should not be represented 
in the drama.^ Furthermore, as will be seen later, 
it is on this conception of the circumscribed plat- 
form and the physical necessities of the audience 
and the actors, that Castelvetro bases his theory of 
the unities of time and place. 

In distinguishing the different genres, Castelvetro 
openly differs with Aristotle. In the Poetics, Aris- 
totle distinguishes men according as they are better 
than we are, or worse, or the same as we are ; and 
from this difference the various species of poetry, 
tragic, comic, and epic, are derived. Castelvetro 
thinks this mode of distinction not only untrue, but 
even inconsistent with what Aristotle says later of 
tragedy. Goodness and badness are to be taken 
account of, according to Castelvetro, not to distin- 
guish one form of poetry from another, but merely 
in the special case of tragedy, in so far as a moder- 
ate virtue, as Aristotle says, is best able to produce 
terror and pity. Poetry, as indeed Aristotle him- 
self acknowledges, is not an imitation of character, 
or of goodness and badness, but of men acting ; and 
the different kinds of poetry are distinguished, not 
by the goodness and badness, or the character, of 
the persons selected for imitation, but by their rank 
or condition alone. The great and all-pervading 
1 Castelvetro, Foetica, pp. 22, 23. 2 j^id p. 57. 



74 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

difference between royal and private persons is 
what distinguishes tragedy and epic poetry on the 
one hand from comedy and similar forms of poetry 
on the other. It is rank, then, and not intellect, 
character, action, — for these vary in men according 
to their condition, — that differentiates one poetic 
form from another; and the distinguishing mark 
of rank on the stage, and in literature generally, is 
the bearing of the characters, royal persons acting 
with propriety, and meaner persons with impro- 
priety.^ Castelvetro has here escaped one pitfall, 
only to fall into another; for while goodness and 
badness cannot, from any aesthetic standpoint, be 
made to distinguish the characters of tragedy from 
those of comedy, — leaving out of consideration 
here the question whether this was or was not the 
actual opinion of Aristotle, — it is no less improper 
to make mere outward rank or condition the dis- 
tinguishing feature. Whether it be regarded as an 
interpretation of Aristotle or as a poetic theory by 
itself, Castelvetro's contention is, in either case, 
equally untenable. 

II. The Function of Tragedy 

No passage in Aristotle's Poetics has been sub- 
jected to more discussion, and certainly no pas- 
sage has been more misunderstood, than that in 
which, at the close of his definition of tragedy, he 
states its peculiar function to be that of effect- 
ing through pity and fear the proper purgation 
1 Castelvetro, Poetica, pp. 35, 36. 



III.] THE THEORY OF THE DRAMA 75 

{Ka.6a.p<ni) of these emotions. The more probable 
of the explanations of this passage are, as " Twining 
says/ reducible to two. The first of these gives to 
Aristotle's katharsis an ethical meaning, attributing 
the effect of the tragedy to its moral lesson and 
example. This interpretation was a literary tra- 
dition of centuries, and may be found in such 
diverse writers as Corneille and Lessing, Kacine 
and Dryden, Dacier and Eapin. According to the 
second interpretation, the purgation of the emotions 
produced by tragedy is an emotional relief gained 
by the excitement of these emotions. Plato had 
insisted that the drama excites passions, such as 
pity and fear, which debase men's spirits; Aris- 
totle in this passage answers that by the very 
exaltation of these emotions they are given a pleas- 
urable outlet, and beyond this there is effected a 
purification of the emotions so relieved. That is, 
the emotions are clarified and purified by being 
passed through the medium of art, and by being, as 
Professor Butcher points out, ennobled by objects 
worthy of an ideal emotion.^ This explanation 
gives no direct moral purpose or influence to the 
katharsis, for tragedy acts on the feelings and not 
on the will. While the ethical conception, of course, 
predominates in Italian criticism, as it does through- 
out Europe up to the very end of the eighteenth 
century, a number of Eenaissance critics, among 
them Minturno and Speroni, even if they failed to 
elaborate the further aesthetic meaning of Aristotle's 
definition, at least perceived that Aristotle ascribed 
1 Twining, ii. 3. 2 Butcher, ch. yi. 



76 LITERAKY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

to tragedy an emotional and not an ethical purpose. 
It is unnecessary to give a detailed statement of tlie 
opinions of the various Italian critics on this point ; 
but it is essential that the interpretations of the 
more important writers should be alluded to, since 
otherwise the Eenaissance conception of the func- 
tion of the drama could not be understood. 

Giraldi Cintio points out that the aim of comedy 
and of tragedy is identical, viz. to conduce to vir- 
tue ; but they reach this result in different ways ; 
for comedy attains its end by means of pleasure 
and comic jests, while tragedy, whether it ends 
happily or unhappily, purges the mind of vice 
through the medium of misery and terror, and thus 
attains its moral end.^ Elsewhere,^ he affirms that 
the tragic poet condemns vicious actions, and by 
combining them with the terrible and the miserable 
makes us fear and hate them. In other words, 
men who are bad are placed in such pitiable and 
terrible positions that we fear to imitate their 
vices ; and it is not a purgation of pity and fear, 
as Aristotle says, but an eradication of all vice and 
vicious desire that is effected by the tragic katharsis. 
Trissino, in the fifth section of his Poetica (1563), 
cites Aristotle's definition of tragedy; but makes 
no attempt to elucidate the doctrine of hatharsis. 
His conception of the function of the drama is 
much the same as Giraldi's. It is the office of the 
tragic poet, through the medium of imitation, to 
praise and admire the good, while that of the comic 
poet is to mock and vituperate the bad ; for tragedy, 
1 Giraldi Cintio, ii. 12. 2 lUd. i. 66 sq. 



III.] THE THEORY OF THE DRAMA 77 

as Aristotle says, deals with, the better sort of 
actions, and comedy with the worse.^ 

Eobortelli (1548), however, ascribes a more aes- 
thetic function to tragedy. By the representation 
of sad and atrocious deeds, tragedy produces terror 
and commiseration in the spectator's mind. The 
exercise of terror and commiseration purges the 
mind of these very passions; for the spectator, 
seeing things performed which are very similar to 
the actual facts of life, becomes accustomed to 
sorrow and pity, and these emotions are gradually 
diminished.^ Moreover, by seeing the sufferings of 
others, men sorrow less at their own, recognizing 
such things as common to human nature. Robor- 
telli's conception of the function of tragedy is, 
therefore, not an ethical one ; the effect of tragedy 
is understood primarily as diminishing pity and 
fear in our minds by accustoming us to the sight of 
deeds that produce these emotions. A similar in- 
terpretation of the katharsis is given by Vettori 
(1560) and Castelvetro (1570) .« The latter com- 
pares the process of purgation with the emotions 
which, are excited by a pestilence. At first the in- 
fected populace is crazed by excitement, but grad- 
ually becomes accustomed to the sight of the 
disease, and the emotions of the people are thus 
tempered and allayed. 

A somewhat different conception of 'katharsis is 
that of Maggi. According to him, we are to under- 

1 Trissino, ii. 93 sq. 

2 Robortelli, p. 52 sq. 

3 Vettori, p. 56 sq., and Castelvetro, Poetica, p. 117 sq. 



78 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

stand by purgation the liberation through, pity and 
fear of passions similar to these, but not pity and 
fear themselves ; for Maggi cannot understand how 
tragedy, which induces pity and fear in the hearer, 
should at the same time remove these perturba- 
tions.-^ Moreover, pity and fear are useful emotions, 
while such passions as avarice, lust, anger, are 
certainly not. In another place, Maggi, relying on 
citations from Plato, Aristotle, and Alexander of 
Aphrodisias, explains the pleasure we receive from 
tragedy, by pointing out that we feel sorrow by 
reason of the human heart within us, which is 
carried out of itself by the sight of misery ; while 
we feel pleasure because it is human and natural to 
feel pity. Pleasure and pain are thus fundamen- 
tally the same.^ Varchi ^ is at one with Maggi in 
interpreting the katharsis as a purgation, not of 
pity and fear themselves, but of emotions similar 
to them. 

For Scaliger (1561) the aim of tragedy, like that 
of all poetry, is a purely ethical one. It is not 
enough to move the spectators to admiration and 
dismay, as some critics say yEschylus does; it 
is also the poet's function to teach, to move, and 
to delight. The poet teaches character through 
actions, in order that we should embrace and imi- 
tate the good, and abstain from the bad. The joy 



1 Maggi, p. 97 sq. 

2 Cf. Shelley, Defence of Poetry, p. 35, " Tragedy delights 
by affording a shadow of that pleasure which exists in pain," 
etc. 

8 Lezzioni, p. 660. 



III.] THE THEORY OF THE DRAMA 79 

of evil men is turned in tragedy to bitterness, and 
tlie sorrow of good men to joy.^ Scaliger is here 
following the extreme view of poetic justice which 
we have found expressed in so many of the Renais- 
sance writers. In the last century, Dr. Johnson, 
in censuring Shakespeare for the tragic fate meted 
out to Cordelia and other blameless characters, 
showed himself an inheritor of this Renaissance 
tradition, just as we shall see that Lessing was in 
other matters. For Scaliger the moral aim of the 
drama is attained both indirectly, by the repre- 
sentation of wickedness ultimately punished and 
virtue ultimately rewarded, and more directly by 
the enunciation of moral precepts throughout the 
play. With the Senecan model before him, such 
precepts (sententice) became the very props of 
tragedy, — sunt enim quasi columnce aut pilce qiice- 
dam universce fabricoe illius, — and so they remained 
in modern classical tragedy. Minturno points out 
that these sententioe are to be used most in tragedy 
and least in epic poetry.^ 

Minturno also follows Scaliger in conceiving that 
the purpose of tragedy is to teach, to delight, and 
to move. It teaches by setting before us an exam- 
ple of the life and manners of superior men, who 
by reason of human error have fallen into extreme 
unhappiness. It delights us by the beauty of its 
verse, its diction, its song, and the like. Lastly, it 
moves us to wonder, by terrifying us and exciting 
our pity, thus purging our minds of such matters. 
This process of purgation is likened by Minturno 

1 Scaliger, Poet. vii. i. 3; iii. 96. 2 ^^.^g Poetica, p. 287. 



80 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

to th.e method of a physician: "As a physician 
eradicates, by means of poisonous medicine, the per- 
fervid poison of disease which affects the body, so 
tragedy purges the mind of its impetuous perturba- 
tions by the force of these emotions beautifully ex- 
pressed in verse." ^ 

According to this interpretation of the katharsiSy 
tragedy is a mode of homoeopathic treatment, effect- 
ing the cure of one emotion by means of a similar 
one ; and we find Milton, in the preface to Samson 
Agonistes, explaining the katliarsis in much the same 
manner : — 

"Tragedy, as it was anciently composed, hath been ever 
held the gravest, moralest, and most profitable of all other 
poems ; therefore said by Aristotle to be of power, by rais- 
ing pity and fear, or terror, to purge the mind of those and 
such like passions ; that is, to temper and reduce them to 
just measure with a kind of delight, stirred up by reading or 
seeing those passions well imitated. Nor is nature wanting 
in her own effects to make good his assertion ; for so in 
physic, things of melancholic hue and quality are used 
against melancholy, sour against sour, salt to remove salt 
humours." 

This passage has been regarded by Twining, Ber- 
nays, and other modern scholars as a remarkable 
indication of Milton's scholarship and critical in- 
sight ; ^ but after all, it need hardly be said, he was 
merely following the interpretation of the Italian 
commentators on the Poetics. Their writings he 
had studied and knew thoroughly, had imbibed all 
the critical ideas of the Italian Eenais^ance, and in 
the very preface from which we have just quoted, 
1 Arte Poetica, p. 77. 2 Butcher, pp. 229, 230. 



III.] THE THEORY OF THE DRAMA 81 

filled as it is with ideas that may be traced back 
to Italian sources, he acknowledges following " the 
ancients and Italians," as of great '^ authority and 
fame." Like Milton, Minturno conceived of tragedy 
as having an ethical aim ; but both Milton and Min- 
turno clearly perceived that by katharsis Aristotle 
had reference not to a moral, but to an emotional, 
effect. 

One of the most interesting discussions on the 
meaning of the katharsis is to be found in a letter 
of Sperone Speroni^ written in 1565. His explana- 
tion of the passage itself is quite an impossible one, if 
only on philological grounds ; but his argument is 
very interesting and very modern. He points out 
that pity and fear may be conceived of as keep- 
ing the spirit of men in bondage, and hence it is 
proper that we should be purged of these emotions. 
But he insists that Aristotle cannot refer to the 
complete eradication of pity and fear — a conception 
which is Stoic rather than Peripatetic, for Aristotle 
does not require us to free ourselves from emotions, 
but to regulate them, since in themselves they are 
not bad. 

III. The Characters of Tragedy 

Aristotle's conception of the ideal tragic hero 
is based on the assumption that the function of 
tragedy is to produce the katharsis, or purgation, 
of pity and fear, — "pity being felt for a person 
who, if not wholly innocent, meets with suffering 

1 Opere, y. 178. 
o 



82 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

beyond his deserts ; fear being awakened when the 
sufferer is a man of like nature with ourselves." ^ 
From this it follows that if tragedy represents the 
fall of an entirely good man from prosperity to ad- 
versity, neither pity nor fear is produced, and the 
result merely shocks and repels us. If an entirely 
bad man is represented as undergoing a change from 
distress to prosperity, not only do we feel no pity 
and no fear, but even the sense of justice is left 
unsatisfied. If, on the contrary, such a man en- 
tirely bad falls from prosperity into adversity and 
distress, the moral sense is indeed satisfied, but 
without the tragic emotions of pity and fear. The 
ideal hero is therefore morally between the two 
extremes, neither eminently good nor entirely bad, 
though leaning to the side of goodness; and the 
misfortune which falls upon him is the result of 
some great flaw of character or fatal error of con- 
duct.2 

This conception of the tragic hero was the subject 
of considerable discussion in the Renaissance ; in 
fact, the first instance in Italian criticism of the 
application of Aristotelian ideas to the theory of 
tragedy is perhaps to be found in the reference of 
Daniello (1536) to the tragic hero's fate. Daniello, 
however, understood Aristotle's meaning very in- 
conlpletely, for he points out that tragedy, in order 
to imitate most perfectly the miserable and the ter- 
rible, should not introduce just and virtuous men 
fallen into vice and injustice through the adversity 
of fortune, for this is more wicked than it is miser- 
1 Butcher, p. 280 sq. » Poet. xiii. 2, 3. 



III.] THE THEORY OF THE DRAMA 83 

able and terrible, nor should evil men, on the con- 
trary, be introduced as changed by prosperity into 
good and just men.^ Here Daniello conceives of 
tragedy as representing the change of a man from 
vice to virtue, or from virtue to vice, through the 
medium of prosperity or misfortune. This is a 
curious misconception of Aristotle's meaning. Aris- 
totle refers, not to the ethical effect of tragedy, but to 
the effect of the emotions of pity and terror upon 
the mind of the spectator, although of course he 
does not wish the catastrophe to shock the moral 
sense or the sense of justice. 

Giraldi Cintio, some years after Daniello, follows 
Aristotle more closely in the conception of the 
tragic hero ; and he affirms, moreover, that tragedy 
may end happily or unhappily so long as it inspires 
pity and terror. Now, Aristotle has expressly 
stated his disapprobation of the happy ending of 
tragedy, for in speaking of tragedies with a double 
thread and a double catastrophe, that is, tragedies 
in which the good are ultimately rewarded and the 
bad punished, he shows that such a conclusion is 
decidedly against the general tragic effect.^ Scal- 
iger's conception of the moral function of the 
tragic poet as rewarding virtue and punishing vice 
is therefore inconsistent with the Aristotelian con- 
ception ; for, as Scaliger insists that every tragedy 
should end unhappily, it follows that only the good 
must survive and only the bad suffer. Another 
critic of this time, Capriano (1555), points out that 
the fatal ending of tragedy is due to the inability 
1 Daniello, p. 38. 2 poet. xiii. 7. 



84 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 



of certain illustrious men. to conduct themselves 
with prudence ; and this is more in keeping with 
Aristotle's true meaning.^ 

It has been seen that Aristotle regarded a per- 
fectly good man as not fitted to be the ideal hero 
of tragedy. Minturno, however, asserts that tragedy 
is grave and illustrious because its characters are 
illustrious, and that therefore he can see no reason, 
despite Aristotle, why the lives of perfect men or 
Christian saints should not be represented on the 
stage, and why even the life of Christ would not 
be a fit subject for tragedy.^ This is, indeed, Cor- 
neille's opinion, and in the examen of his Polyeucte 
he cites Minturno in justification of his own case. 
As regards the other characters of tragedy, Min- 
turno states a curious distinction between charac- 
ters fit for tragedy and those fit for comedy.^ In 
the first place, he points out that no young girls, 
with the exception of female slaves, should appear 
in comedy, for the reason that the women of the 
people do not appear in public until marriage, and 
would be sullied by the company of the low char- 
acters of comedy, whereas the maidens of tragedy 
are princesses, accustomed to meet and converse 
with noblemen from girlhood. Secondly, married 
women are always represented in comedy as faith- 
ful, in tragedy as unfaithful to their husbands, for 
the reason that comedy concludes with friendship 

1 Delia Vera Poetica, cap. iii. 

2 De Poeta, p. 182 sg. 

3 Arte Poetica, p. 118 sq.; also in Scaliger and Giraldi 
Cintio. 



III.] THE THEORY OF THE DRAMA 85 

and tranquillity, and unfaithful relations could never 
end happily, while the love depicted in tragedy 
serves to bring about the tragic ruin of great 
houses. Thirdly, in comedy old men are often 
represented as in love, but never in tragedy, for 
an amorous old man is conducive to laughter, 
which comedy aims at producing, but which would 
be wholly out of keeping with the gravity required 
in tragedy. These distinctions are of course de- 
duced from the practice of the Latin drama — the 
tragedies of Seneca on the one hand, and the 
comedies of Plautus and Terence on the other. 

In a certain passage of Aristotle's Poetics there 
is a formulation of the requirements of character- 
drawing in the drama.^ In this passage Aristotle 
says that the characters must be good; that they 
must be drawn with propriety, that is, in keeping 
with the type to which they belong; that they 
must be true to life, something quite distinct 
either from goodness or propriety; and that the 
characters must be self-consistent. This passage 
gave rise to a curious conception of character in 
the Renaissance and throughout the period of clas- 
sicism. According to this, the conception of de- 
corum, it was insisted that every old man should 
have such and such characteristics, every young 
man certain others, and so on for the soldier, the 
merchant, the Florentine or Parisian, and the like. 
This fixed and formal mode of regarding character 
was connected with the distinction of rank as the 
fundamental difference between the characters of 
1 Poet. XV. 1-5. 



86 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

tragedy and comedy, and it was really founded on 
a passage in Horace's Ars Poetica, — 

" ^tatis cujusque notandi sunt tibi mores," ^ 
and on the rhetorical descriptions of the various 
characteristics of men in the second book of Aris- 
totle's Rhetoric. 

The explanation of the Eenaissance concep- 
tion of decorum may start from either of two 
points of view. In the first place, it is to be 
noted that Horace, and after him the critics of the 
Renaissance, set about to transpose to the domain 
of poetry the tentative distinctions of character 
formulated by Aristotle, in the Rhetoric, simply 
for the purposes of rhetorical exposition. These 
distinctions, it must be repeated, were rhetorical 
and not aesthetic, and they are therefore not 
alluded to by Aristotle in the Poetics. The result 
of the attempt to transpose them to the domain of 
poetry led to a hardening and crystallization of 
character in the classic drama. But the aesthetic 
misconception implied by such an attempt is only 
too obvious. In such a system poetry is held 
accountable, not to the ideal truth of human life, 
but to certain arbitrary, or at best merely empirical, 
formulae of rhetorical theory. The Eenaissance 
was in this merely doing for character what was 
being done for all the other elements of art. Every 
such element, when once discriminated and defi- 
nitely formulated, became fixed as a necessary and 
inviolable substitute for the reality which had thus 
been analyzed. ;^^ U 

1 Ars Poet. 154 sq. 



III.] THE THEORY OF THE DRAMA 87 

But we may look at the principle of decorum from 
another point of view. A much deeper question — 
the question of social distinctions — is here in- 
volved. The observance of decorum necessitated 
the maintenance of the social distinctions which 
formed the basis of Eenaissance life and of Benais- 
sance literature. It was this same tendency which 
caused the tragedy of classicism to exclude all but 
characters of the highest rank. Speaking of narra- 
tive poetry, Muzio (1551), while allowing kings to 
mingle with the masses, considers it absolutely im- 
proper for one of the people, even for a moment, to 
assume the sceptre.-^ Accordingly, men as distin- 
guished by the accidents of rank, profession, coun- 
try, and not as distinguished by that only which art 
should take cognizance of, character, became the sub- 
jects of the literature of classicism ; and in so far 
as this is true, that literature loses something of 
the profundity and the universality of the highest 
art. 

This element of decorum is to be found in all the 
critics of the Renaissance from the time of Vida^ 
and Daniello.^ So essential became the observance 
of decorum that Muzio and Oapriano both consid- 
ered it the most serious charge to be made against 
Homer, that he Avas not always observant of it. 
Capriano, comparing Virgil with Homer, asserts 
that the Latin poet surpasses the Greek in elo- 
quence, in dignity, in grandeur of style, but beyond 
everything in decorum.^ The seeming vulgarity 

1 Muzio, p. 80. 3 Poetica, p. 36 5g. 

2 Pope, i. 165. 4 Capriano, op. cit., cap. v. 



88 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

of some of Homer's similes, and even of the 
actions of some of Ms characters, appeared to the 
Renaissance a most serious blemish; and it .was 
this that led Scaliger to rate Homer not only below 
Virgil, but even below Musaeus. In Minturno and 
Scaliger we find every detail of character minutely 
analyzed. The poet is told how young men and old 
men should act, should talk, and should dress ; and 
no deviations from these fixed formulae were allowed 
under any circumstances. As a result of this, even 
when the poet liberated himself from these concep- 
tions, and aimed at depicting character in its true 
sense, we find character, but never the development 
of character, portrayed in the neo-classic drama. 
The character was fixed from the beginning of the 
play to the end ; and it is here that we may find 
the origin of Ben Jonson's conception of "hu- 
mours." In one of Salviati's lectures, Del Trattato 
delta Poetica,^ Salviati defines a humour as "a 
peculiar quality of nature according to which every 
one is inclined to some special thing more than to 
any other." This would apply very distinctly to 
the sense in which the Elizabethans used the word. 
Thus Jonson himself, in the Induction of Every 
Man out of his Humour, after expounding the med- 
ical notion of a humour, says : — 

"It may, by metaphor, apply itself 
Unto the general disposition : 
As when some one peculiar quality 
Doth so possess a man, that it doth draw 
All his effects, his spirits, and his powers, 

1 Cod. Magliabechiano, vii. 7, 715. 



III.] THE THEORY OF THE DRAMA 89 

In their confluctions, all to run one way, 
This may be truly said to be a humour." 

The^ origin of the term "humour," in Jonson's sense, 
has never been carefully studied. Jonson's editors 
speak of it as peculiar to the English language, and 
as first used in this sense about Jonson's period. 
It is not our purpose to go further into this ques- 
tion; but Salviati's definition is close enough to 
Jonson's to indicate that the origin of this term, as 
of all other critical terms and critical ideas through- 
out sixteenth-century Europe, must be looked for in 
the sesthetic literature of Italy.^ 

IV. Tlie Dramatic Unities 

In his definition of tragedy Aristotle says that 
the play must be complete or perfect, that is, it 
must have unity. By unity of plot he does not 
mean merely the unity given by a single hero, for, 
as he says, " iniinitely various are the incidents in 
one man's life which cannot be reduced to unity ; 
and so, too, there are many actions of one man out 
of which we cannot make one action. Hence the 
error, as it appears, of all poets who have composed 
a Heracleid, a Theseid, or other poems of the kind. 
They imagine that as Heracles was one man, the 
story of Heracles ought also to be a unity." ^ This 
is Aristotle's statement of the unity of action. But 

1 Another expression of Jonson's, " small Latin and less 
Greek," may perhaps be traced to Minturno's " poco del Latino 
e pochissimo del Greco," Arte Poetica, p. 158. 

2 Poet. viii. 1-4. 



90 LITERAKY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

what is the origin of the two other unitieSj — the 
unities of time and place ? There is in the Poetics 
but a single reference to the time-limit of the tragic 
action and none whatsoever to the so-called unity 
of place. Aristotle says that the action of trag- 
edy and that of epic poetry differ in length, "for 
tragedy endeavors, so far as possible, to confine 
itself to a single revolution of the sun, or but 
slightly to exceed this limit ; whereas the epic 
action has no limits of time." ^ This passage is the 
incidental statement of an historical fact; it is 
merely a tentative deduction from the usual prac- 
tice of Greek tragedy, and Aristotle never con- 
ceived of it as an inviolable law of the drama. Of 
the three unities which play so prominent a part in 
modern classical drama, the unity of action was the 
main, and, in fact, the only unity which Aristotle 
knew or insisted on. But from his incidental ref- 
erence to the general time-limits of Greek tragedy, 
the Eenaissance formulated the unity of time, and 
deduced from it also the unity of place, to which 
there is absolutely no reference either in Aristotle 
or in any other ancient writer whatevesv-^t is to the 
Italians of the Eenaissance, and not to the French 
critics of the seventeenth century, that the world 
owes the formulation of the three unities. The 
attention of scholars was first called to this fact 
about twenty years ago, by the brochure of a Swiss 
scholar, H. Breitinger, on the unities of Aristotle 
before Corneille's Cid; but the gradual develop- 
ment and formulation of the three unities have 
1 Poet. V. 4. 



III.] THE THEORY OF THE DRAMA 91 

never been systematically worked out. We shall 
endeavor here to trace their history during the 
sixteenth century, and to explain the processes by 
which they developed. 

The first reference in modern literature to the 
doctrine of the unity of time is to be found in 
Giraldi Cintio's Discorso sidle Comedie e sulle Trage- 
die. He says that comedy and tragedy agree, 
among other things, in the limitation of the action 
to one day or but little more ; ^ and he has thus for 
the first time converted Aristotle's statement of an 
historical fact into a dramatic law. Moreover, he 
has changed Aristotle's phrase, that tragedy limits 
itself " to a single revolution of the sun," into the 
more definite expression of "a single day." He 
points out that Euripides, in the HeracUdce, on 
account of the long distance between the places in 
the action, had been unable to limit the action to 
one day. Now, as Aristotle must have known 
many of the best Greek dramas which are now lost, 
it was probably in keeping with the practice of 
such dramas that their actions were not strictly 
confined within the limits of one day. Aristotle, 
therefore, intentionally allowed the drama a 
slightly longer space of time than a single day. 
The unity of time, accordingly, becomes a part of 
the theory of the drama between 1540 and 1545, 
but it was not until almost exactly a century later 
that it became an invariable rule of the dramatic 
literature of France and of the world. 

In Eobortelli (1548) we find Aristotle's phrase, 

1 Giraldi Cintio, ii. 10 sq. 



92 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

"a single revolution of the sun," restricted to the 
artificial day of twelve hours; for as tragedy can 
contain only one single and continuous action, and as 
people are accustomed to sleep in the night, it follows 
that the tragic action cannot be continued beyond 
one artificial day. This holds good of comedy as 
well as tragedy, for the length of the fable in each is 
the same.^ Segni (1549) differs from Robortelli, 
however, in regarding a single revolution of the sun 
as referring not to the artificial day of twelve hours, 
but to the natural day of twenty-four hours, because 
various matters treated in tragedy, and even in 
comedy, are such as are more likely to happen 
in the night (adulteries, murders, and the like) ; 
and if it be said that night is naturally the time for 
repose, Segni answers that unjust people act con- 
trary to the laws of nature.^ It was about this 
time, then, that there commenced the historic con- 
troversy as to what Aristotle meant by limiting 
tragedy to one day ; and three-quarters of a century 
later, in 1623, Beni could cite thirteen different 
opinions of scholars on this question. 

Trissino, in his Poetica (1563), paraphrases as 
follows the passage in Aristotle which refers to 
the unity of time : " They also differ in length, 
for tragedy terminates in one day, that is, one 
period of the sun, or but little more, while there is 
no time determined for epic poetry, as indeed was 
the custom with tragedy and comedy at their be- 

1 Robortelli, pp. 50, 275, and appendix, p. 45. Cf. Luisino's 
Commentary on Horace's Ai^s Poetica, 1554, p. 40. 

2 B. Segni, p. 170 v. 



III.] THE THEORY OF THE DRAMA 93 

ginning, and is even today among ignorant poets." ^ 
Here for the first time, as a French critic remarks, 
the observance of the unity of time is made a dis- 
tinction between the learned and the ignorant 
poet.^ It is evident that Trissino conceives of the 
unity of time as an artistic principle which has 
helped to save dramatic poetry from the formless- 
ness and chaotic condition of the mediaeval drama. 
So that the unity of time became not only a dra- 
matic law, but one the observation of which distin- 
guished the dramatic artist from the mere ignorant 
compiler of popular plays. 

There is in none of the writers we have men- 
tioned so far any reference to the unity of place, 
for the simple reason that there is no allusion to 
such a requirement for the drama in Aristotle's 
Poetics. Maggi's discussion of the unity of time, 
in his commentary on the Poetics (1550), is of 
particular interest as preparing the way for the 
third unity. Maggi attempts to explain logically 
the reason for the unity of time.^ Why should 
tragedy be limited as to time, and not epic poetry ? 
According to him, this difference is to be explained 
by the fact that the drama is represented on the 
stage before our eyes, and if we should see the ac- 
tions of a whole month performed in about the 
time it takes to perform the play, that is, two or 
three hours, the performance would be absolutely 
incredible. For example, says Maggi, if in a trag- 
edy we should send a messenger to Egypt, and he 
would return in an hour, would not the spectator 

1 Trissino, ii. 95. 2 Brunetiere, i. 69. ^ Maggi, p. 94. 



94 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

regard this as ridiculous ? In the epic, on the con- 
trary, we do not see the actions performed, and so 
do not feel the need of limiting them to any par- 
ticular time. Now, it is to be noted here that this 
limitation of time is based on the idea of represen- 
tation. The duration of the action of the drama 
itself must fairly coincide with the duration of its 
representation on the stage. This is the principle 
which led to the acceptance of the unity of place, 
and upon which it is based. Limit the time of the 
action to the time of representation, and it follows 
that the place of the action must be limited to the 
place of representation. Such a limitation is of 
course a piece of realism wholly out of keeping 
with the true dramatic illusion ; but it was almost 
exclusively in the drama that classicism tended 
toward a minuter realism than could be justified by 
the Aristotelian canons. In Maggi the beginnings 
of the unity of place are evident, inasmuch as he 
finds that the requirements of the representation 
do not permit a messenger or any character in the 
drama to be sent very far from the place where the 
action is being performed. The closer action and 
representation coincide, the clearer becomes the ne- 
cessity of a limitation in place as well as in time ; 
and it was on this principle that Scaliger and 
Castelvetro, somewhat later, formulated the three 
unities. 

There is, indeed, in Scaliger (1561) no direct 
statement of the unity of time; but the reference 
to it is nevertheless unmistakable. First of all, 
Scaliger requires that the events be so arranged 



III.] THE THEORY OF THE DRAMA 95 

and disposed that they approach nearest to actual 
truth (ut quam proxime accedant ad veritatem)} 
This is equivalent to saying that the duration of 
the action, its place, its mode of procedure, must 
correspond more or less exactly with the represen- 
tation itself. The dramatic poet must aim, beyond 
all things, at reproducing the actual conditions of 
life. The verisimile, the vraisemblahle, in the ety- 
mological sense of these words, must be the final 
criterion of dramatic composition. It is not suffi- 
cient that the spectator should be satisfied with 
the action as typical of similar actions in life. An 
absolutely perfect illusion must prevail; the spec- 
tator must be moved by the actions of the play 
exactly as if they were those of real life. 

This notion of the verisimile, and of its effect of 
perfect illusion on the spectator's mind, prevailed 
throughout the period of classicism, and was vigor- 
ously defended by no less a critic than Voltaire 
himself. Accordingly, as Maggi first pointed out, 
if the playwright, in the few hours it takes to 
represent the whole play, requires one of his char- 
acters to perform an action that cannot be done in 
less than a month, this impression of actual truth 
and perfect illusion will not be left on the specta- 
tor's mind. "Therefore," says Scaliger, "those 
battles and assaults which take place about Thebes 
in the space of two hours do not please me ; no sen- 
sible poet should make any one move from Delphi 
to Thebes, or from Thebes to Athens, in a mo- 

1 Scaliger, iii. 96. So Robortelli, p. 53, speaks of tragedy as 
representing things qux multum accedunt ad veritatem ipsam. 



96 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

ment's time. Agamemnon is buried by iEscliylus 
after being killed, and Liclias is hurled into the 
sea by Hercules ; but this cannot be represented 
without violence to truth. Accordingly, the poet 
should choose the briefest possible argument, and 
should enliven it by means of episodes and details. 
. . . Since the whole play is represented on the 
stage in six or eight hours, it is not in accordance 
with the exact appearance of truth (haud verisimile 
est) that within that brief space of time a tempest 
should arise and a shipwreck occur, out of sight of 
land." 

The observance of the unity of time could not 
be demanded in clearer or more forcible terms 
than this. But it is a mistake to construe this 
passage into a statement of the unity of place.^ 
When Scaliger says that the poet should not move 
any one of the characters from Delphi to Thebes, 
or from Thebes to Athens, in a moment's time, he 
is referring to the exigencies, not of place, but of 
time. In this, as in many other things, he is merely 
following Maggi, who, as we have seen, says that 
it is ridiculous for a dramatist to have a messenger 
go to Egypt with a message and return in an hour. 
The characters, according to Scaliger, should not 
move from Delphi to Thebes in a moment, not 
because the action need necessarily occur in one 
single place, but because the characters cannot 
with any appearance of truth go a great distance 
in a short space of time. This is an approach to 
the unity of place, and had Scaliger followed his 
1 £J.g. Liutilhac, De ^'caZ. Poet. p. 32. 



III.] THE THEORY OF THE DRAMA 97 

contention to its logical conclusion, lie must cer- 
tainly have formulated the three unities. But by 
requiring the action to be disposed with the great- 
est possible approach to the actual truth, or, in 
other words, by insisting that the action must co- 
incide with the representation, Scaliger helped 
more than any of his predecessors to the final rec- 
ognition of the unity of place. 

In Minturno ^ and in Vettori ^ we find a tendency 
to restrict the duration of the epic as well as the 
tragic action. It has been seen that Aristotle dis- 
tinctly says that while the action of tragedy gener- 
ally endeavors to confine itself within a period of 
about one day, that of epic poetry has no determined 
time. Minturno, however, alludes to the unity of 
time in the following words : " Whoever examines 
well the works of the most esteemed ancient writers, 
will find that the action represented on the stage is 
terminated in one day, or does not pass beyond the 
space of two days; while the epic has a longer 
period of time, except that its action cannot exceed 
one year in duration." ^ This limitation Minturno 
deduces from the practice of Homer and Virgil.^ 
The action of the Iliad begins in the tenth year of 
the Trojan war, and lasts one year ; the action of 
the ^neid begins in the seventh year after the de- 
parture of iEneas from Troy, and also lasts one 
year. 

Castelvetro, however, was the first theorist to 
formulate the unity of place, and thus to give the 

1 De Poeta, pp. 185, 281. 3 jrte Poet. pp. 71, 117. 

2 Vettori, p. 250. * Ibid. p. 12. 



98 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

three unities their final form. We have seen that 
Castelvetro's theory of the drama was based entirely 
upon the notion of stage representation. All the 
essentials of dramatic literature are thus fixed by 
the exigencies of the stage. The stage is a circum- 
scribed space, and the play must be performed upon 
it within a period of time limited by the physical 
necessities of the spectators. It is from these two 
facts that Castelvetro deduces the unities of time 
and place. While asserting that Aristotle held it 
as cosa Jermissima e verissima that the tragic action 
cannot exceed the length of an artificial day of 
twelve hours, he does not think that Aristotle him- 
self understood the real reason of this limitation.* 
In the seventh chapter of the Poetics Aristotle says 
that the length of the plot is limited by the pos- 
sibility of its being carried in the memory of the 
spectator conveniently at one time. But this, it is 
urged, would restrict the epic as well as the tragic 
fable to one day. The difference between epic and 
dramatic poetry in this respect is to be found in the 
essential difference between the conditions of nar- 
rative and scenic poetry.^ Narrative poetry can in 
a short time narrate things that happen in many 
days or months or even years; but scenic poetry, 
which spends as many hours in representing things 
as it actually takes to do them in life, does quite 
otherwise. In epic poetry words can present to 
our intellect things distant in space and time ; but 
in dramatic poetry the whole action occurs before 
our eyes, and is accordingly limited to what we can 
1 Castelvetro, Poetica, pp. 157, 170. 2 jud. pp. 57, 109. 



III.] THE THEORY OF THE DRAMA 99 

actually see with our own senses, that is, to that 
brief duration of time and to that small amount of 
space in which the actors are occupied in acting, and 
not any other time or place. But as the restricted 
place is the stage, so the restricted time is that in 
which the spectators can at their ease remain sitting 
through a continuous performance; and this time, 
on account of the physical necessities of the specta- 
tors, such as eating, drinking, and sleeping, cannot 
well go beyond the duration of one revolution of the 
sun. So that not only is the unity of time an 
essential dramatic requirement, but it is in fact im- 
possible for the dramatist to do otherwise even 
should he desire to do so — a conclusion which is 
of course the reductio ad absurdum of the whole 
argument. 

In another place Castelvetro more briefly formu- 
lates the law of the unities in the definitive form 
in which it was to remain throughout the period 
of classicism : ^' La mutatione tragica non puo 
tirar con esso seco se non una giornata e un 
luogo. "^ The unities of time and place are for 
Castelvetro so very important that the unity of 
action, which is for Aristotle the only essential of 
the drama, is entirely subordinated to them. In 
fact, Castelvetro specifically says that the unity of 
action is not essential to the drama, but is merely 
made expedient by the requirements of time and 
place. ^' In comedy and tragedy," he says, " there 
is usually one action, not because the fable is un- 
fitted to contain more than one action, but because 

1 Castelvetro, Poetica, p. 534. Cf. Boileau, Art Po^t. iii. 45. 



100 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

the restricted space in wliicli the action is repre- 
sented, and the liDiited time, twelve honrs at the 
very most, do not permit of a multitude of ac- 
tions."^ In a similar manner Castelvetro applies 
the law of the unities to epic poetry, ^though 
the epic action can be accomplished in many places 
and at diverse times, yet as it is more commendable 
and pleasurable to have a single action, so it is 
better for the action to confine itself to a short time 
and to but few places. In other words, the more 
the epic attempts to restrict itself to the unities of 
place and time, the better, according to Castelvetro, 
it will be.^ Moreover, Castelvetro was not merely 
the first one to formulate the unities in their defini- 
tive form, but he was also the first to insist upon 
them as inviolable laws of the drama; and he 
refers to them over and over again in the pages of 
his commenta^ry on the Poetics.^ 

This then is the origin of the unities. Our dis- 
cussion must have made it clear how little they 
deserve the traditional title of Aristotelian unities, 
or as a recent critic with equal inaccuracy calls 
them, the Scaligerian unities {unites scaligeriennes)} 
I^or were they, as we have seen, first formulated in 
Prance, though this was the opinion of the seven- 
teenth and eighteenth centuries. Thus Dryden 
says that " the unity of place, however it might be 

1 Castelvetro, Poetica, p. 179. 

2 Ibid. pp. 534, 535. 

3 Other allusions to the unities, besides those already men- 
tioned, will be found in Castelvetro, Poetica, pp. 163-165, 168- 
171, 191, 397, 501, 527, 531-536, 692, 697, etc. 

* Lintilhac, in the Nouvelle Bevue, Ixiv. 541. 



III.] THE THEORY OF THE DRAMA 101 

practised by the ancients, was never one of their 
rules: we neither find it in Aristotle, Horace, or 
any who have written of it, till in our age the 
French poets first made it a precept of the stage." ^ 
It may be said, therefore, that just as the unity of 
action is par excellence the Aristotelian unity, so the 
unities of time and place are beyond a doubt the 
Italian unities. They enter the critical literature 
of Europe from the time of Castelvetro, and may 
almost be said to be the last contributions of Italy 
to literary criticism. Two years after their formu- 
lation by Castelvetro they were introduced into 
France, and a dozen years after this formulation, 
into England. It was not until 1636, however, 
that they became fixed in modern dramatic litera- 
ture, as a result of the Cid controversy. This is 
approximately a hundred years after the first men- 
tion of the unity of time in Italian criticism. 

V. Comedy 

The treatment of comedy in the literary criticism 
of this period is entirely confined to a discussion 
and elaboration of the little that Aristotle says on 
the subject of comedy in the Poetics. Aristotle, it 
will be remembered, had distinguished tragedy from 
comedy in that the former deals with the nobler, 
the latter with the baser, sort of actions. Comedy 
is an imitation of characters of a lower type than 
those of tragedy, — characters of a lower type 
indeed, but not in the full sense of the word bad. 
1 Essay of Dramatic Poesy, p. 31. 



102 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

"The ludicrous is merely a subdivision of the 
ugly. It may be defined as a defect or ugliness 
which is not painful or destructive. Thus, for 
example, the comic mask is ugly and distorted, but 
does not cause pain." ^ From these few hints the 
Italian theorists constructed a body of comic doc- 
trine. There is, however, in the critical literature 
of this period no attempt to explain the theory of 
the indigenous Italian comedy, the commedia dell' 
arte. The classical comedies of Plautus and Terence 
were the models, and Aristotle's Poetics the guide, 
of all the discussions on comedy during the Kenais- 
sance. The distinction between the characters of 
comedy and tragedy has already been explained in 
sufficient detail. All that remains to be done in 
treating of comedy is to indicate as briefly as 
possible such definitions of it as were formulated 
by the Renaissance, and the special function which 
the Eenaissance understood comedy to possess. 

According to Trissino (1563), the comic poet deals 
only with base things, and for the single purpose 
of chastising them. As tragedy attains its moral 
end through the medium of pity and fear, comedy 
does so by means of the chastisement and vitupera- 
tion of things that are base and evil.^ The comic 
poet, however, is not to deal with all sorts of vices, 
but only such as give rise to ridicule, that is, the 
jocose actions of humble and unknown persons. 
Laughter proceeds from a certain delight or pleas- 
ure arising from the sight of objects of ugliness. 

1 Poet. y. 1. Cf. Rhet. iii. 18. 

2 Trissino, ii. 120. Cf. Butcher, p. 203 sq. 



in.] THE THEORY OF THE DRAMA 103 

We do not laugh at a beautiful woman, a gorgeous 
jewel, or beautiful music ; but a distortion or de- 
formity, such, as a silly speech, an ugly face, or a 
clumsy movement, makes us laugh. We do not 
laugh at the benefits of others ; the finder of a 
purse, for example, arouses not laughter but envy. 
But we do laugh at some one who has fallen into 
the mud, because, as Lucretius says, it is sweet to 
find in others some evil not to be found in ourselves. 
Yet great evils, so far from causing us to laugh, 
arouse pity and fear, because we are apprehensive 
lest such things should happen to us. Hence we 
may conclude that a slight evil which is neither sad 
nor destructive, and which we perceive in others but 
do not believe to be in ourselves, is the primary 
cause of the ludicrous.^ In Maggi's treatise, De 
Ridiculis, appended to his commentary on the 
Poetics, the Aristotelian conception of the ridiculous 
is accepted, with the addition of the element of 
admiratio. Maggi insists on the idea of suddenness 
or novelty ; for we do not laugh at painless ugliness 
if it be very familiar or long continued.^ 

According to Eobortelli (1548), comedy, like all 
other forms of poetry, imitates the manners and 
actions of men, and aims at producing laughter and 

1 Trissino, ii. 127-130. Trissino seems to follow Cicero, De Orat. 
ii. 58 sq. It is to these Italian discussions of the ludicrous that 
the theory of laughter formulated by Hobbes, and after him by 
Addison, owes its origin. For Renaissance discussions of wit 
and humor before the introduction of Aristotle's Poetics, cf. the 
third and fourth books of Pontano's Be Sermone, and the second 
book of Castiglione's Cortigiano. 

2 Maggi, p. 307. Cf. Hobbes, Human Nature, 1650, ix. 13. 



104 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

light-lieartedness. But what produces laughter ? 
The evil and obscene merely disgust good men ; the 
sad and miserable cause pity and fear. The basis 
of laughter is therefore to be found in what is only 
slightly mean or ugly {subturpiculum). The object 
of comedy, according to the consensus of Eenais- 
sance opinion, is therefore to produce laughter for 
the purpose of rendering the minor vices ridiculous. 
Muzio (1551) indeed complains, as both Sidney and 
Ben Jonson do later, that the comic writers of his 
day were more intent on producing laughter than 
on depicting character or manners : — 

"Intenta al riso 
Piu ch' a i costumi.'* 

But Minturno points out that comedy is not to be 
contemned because it excites laughter ; for by comic 
hilarity the spectators are kept from becoming 
buffoons themselves, and by the ridiculous light in 
which amours are placed, are made to avoid such 
things in future. Comedy is the best corrective 
of men's morals ; it is indeed what Cicero calls it, 
imitatio vitce, speculum consuetudinis, imago verita- 
tis. This phrase, ascribed by Donatus to Cicero, 
runs through all the dramatic discussions of the 
Renaissance,^ and finds its echo in a famous pas- 
sage in Hamlet. Cervantes cites the phrase in Don 
Quixote ; ^ and II Lasca, in the prologue to VArzi- 
goglio, berates the comic writers of his day after 
this fashion : " They take no account of the ab- 
surdities, the contradictions, the inequalities, and 

1 Cf. B. Tasso, ii. 515 ; Robortelli, p. 2; etc. 

2 Don Quiz. iv. 21. 



III.] THE THEORY OF THE DRAMA 105 

the discrepancies of their pieces; for they do not 
seem to know that comedy should be truth's image, 
the ensample of manners, and the mirror of life." 

This is exactly what Shakespeare is contending 
for when he makes Hamlet caution the players not 
to " o'erstep the modesty of nature ; for anything 
so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose 
end, both at the first and now, was and is, to 
hold as 'twere the mirror up to nature ; to show 
virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and 
the very age and body of the time his form and 
pressure." ^ 

The high importance which Scaliger (1561) gives 
to comedy, and in fact to satiric and didactic poetry 
in general, is one of many indications of the incipi- 
ent formation of neo-classical ideals during the 
Eenaissance. He regards as absurd the statement 
which he conceives Horace to have made, that 
comedy is not really poetry ; on the contrary, it is 
the true form of poetry, and the first and highest 
of all, for its matter is entirely invented by the 
poet.^ He defines comedy as a dramatic poem 
filled with intrigue (negotiosum), written in popular 
style, and ending happily.^ The characters in com- 
edy are chiefly old men, slaves, courtesans, all in 
humble station or from small villages. The action 
begins rather turbulently, but ends happily, and the 

1 Hamlet, iii. 2. 

2 Scaliger, Poet. i. 2. Castiglione, in the second book of the 
Cortigiano, says that the comic writer, more than any other, 
expresses the true image of human life. 

8 Poet. i. 5. 



106 LITERAKY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. hi. 

style is neither high nor low. The typical themes 
of comedy are " sports, banquets, nuptials, drunken 
carousals, the crafty wiles of slaves, and the decep- 
tion of old men.'' ^ 

The theory of comedy in sixteenth-century Italy 
was entirely classical, and the practice of the time 
agrees with its theory. There are indeed to be 
heard occasional notes of dissatisfaction and revolt, 
especially in the prologues of popular plays. II 
Lasca, in the prologue to the Strega, defiantly pro- 
tests against the inviolable authority of Aristotle 
and Horace, and in the prologue to his Gelosia re- 
serves the right to copy the manners of his own time, 
and not those of Plautus and Terence. Cecchi, 
Aretino, Gelli, and other comic writers give expres- 
sion to similar sentiments.^ But on the whole 
these protests availed nothing. The authors of 
comedy, and more especially the literary critics, 
were guided by classical practice and classical the- 
ory. Dramatic forms like the improvised commedia 
delV arte had marked influence on the practice of 
European comedy in general, especially in France, 
but left no traces of their influence on the literary 
criticism of the Italian Eenaissance. 

^Poet. iii. 96. 

2 Symonds, Ben. in Italy, v. 124 sq., 533 sq. For Castelvetro's 
theory of comedy, see A. Fasco, La Poetica di Lodovico 
Castelvetro, Naples, 1904, p. 228 sq. Ben Jonson derived his 
theory of laughter iu comedy from Daniel Heinsius ; cf. my 
article in Modern Philology, 1905, ii. 451 sq. 



CHAPTEE IV 

THE THEORY OF EPIC POETRY 

Epic poetry was held in the highest esteem dur- 
ing the Kenaissance and indeed throughout the 
period of classicism. It was regarded by Vida as 
the highest form of poetry/ and a century later, 
despite the success of tragedy in Erance, Eapin 
still held the same opinion.^ The reverence for 
the epic throughout the Eenaissance may be 
ascribed in part to the mediaeval veneration of 
Virgil as a poet, and his popular apotheosis as 
prophet and magician, and also in part to the 
decay into which dramatic literature had fallen 
during the Middle Ages in the hands of the wan- 
dering players, the histriones and the vagantes. 
Aristotle ^ indeed had regarded tragedy as the high- 
est form of poetry ; and as a result, the traditional 
reverence for Virgil and Homer, and the Kenais- 
sance subservience to Aristotle, were distinctly at 
variance. Trissino (1561) paraphrases Aristotle's 
argument in favor of tragedy, but points out, not- 
withstanding this, that the whole world is unani- 
mous in considering Virgil and Homer greater than 
any tragic poet before or after them."* Placed in 

1 Pope, i. 133. 3 Poet. xxvi. 

2 Rapin, 1674, ii. 2. ^ Trissino, ii. 118 sq. 

107 



108 LITEKARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap.' 

this quandary, he concludes by leaving the reader 
to judge for himself whether epic or tragedy be the 
nobler form. 



I. The Theory of the Epic Poem 

Yida's Ars Poetica, written before 1520, although 
no edition prior to that of 1527 is extant, is the 
earliest example in modern times of that class 
of critical poems to which belong Horace's Ars 
Poetica, Boileau's Art Poetique, and Pope's Essay 
on Criticism. Vida's poem is entirely based on that 
of Horace; but he substitutes epic for Horace's 
dramatic studies, and employs the ^neid as the 
model of an epic poem. The incompleteness of the 
treatment accorded to epic poetry in Aristotle's 
Poetics led the Kenaissance to deduce the laws of 
heroic poetry and of poetic artifice in general from 
the practice of Virgil ; and it is to this point of 
view that the critical works on the ^neid by Kegolo 
(1563), Maranta (1564), and Toscanella (1566) owe 
their origin. The obvious and even accidental 
qualities of Virgil's poem are enunciated by Vida 
as fundamental laws of epic poetry. The precepts 
thus given are purely rhetorical and pedagogic in 
character, and deal almost exclusively with ques- 
tions of poetic invention, disposition, polish, and 
style. Beyond this Vida does not attempt to go. 
There is in his poem no definition of the epic, no 
theory of its function, no analysis of the essentials 
of narrative structure. In fact, no theory of poetry 
in any real sense is to be found in Vida's treatise. 



IV.] THE THEORY OF EPIC POETRY 109 

Daniello (1536) deals only very cursorily with 
epic poetry, but his definition of it strikes the key- 
note of the Eenaissance conception. Heroic poetry 
is for him an imitation of the illustrious deeds of 
emperors and other men magnanimous and valorous 
in arms,^ — a conception that goes back to Horace's 

" Res gestae regumque ducumque et tristia bella." 2 

Trissino (1563) first introduced the Aristotelian 
theory of the epic into modern literary criticism ; 
and the sixth section of his Poetica is given up 
almost exclusively to the treatment of heroic poetry. 
The epic agrees with tragedy in dealing with illus- 
trious men and illustrious actions. Like tragedy it 
must have a single action, but it differs from trag- 
edy in not having the time of the action limited 
or determined. While unity of action is essential 
to the epic, and is indeed what distinguishes it from 
narrative poems that are not really epics, the Re- 
naissance conceived of vastness of design and large- 
ness of detail as necessary to the grandiose character 
of the epic poem.' Thus Muzio says : — 

" H poema sovrano b una pittura 
De r universo, e per6 in sh comprende 
Ogni stilo, ogni forma, ogni ritratto." 

Trissino regards versi sciolti as the proper metre 
for an heroic poem, since the stanzaic form impedes 
the continuity of the narrative. In this point he 
finds fault with Boccaccio, Boiardo, and Ariosto, 
whose romantic poems, moreover, he does not regard 
as epics, because they do not obey Aristotle's invio- 

1 Daniello, p. 34. 2 Ars Poet. 73. 3 Trissino, ii. 112 sq. 



110 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

lable law of tlie single action. He also finds fault 
with the romantic poets for describing the improb- 
able, since Aristotle expressly prefers an impossi- 
ble probability to an improbable possibility. 

Minturno's definition of epic poetry is merely a 
modification or paraphrase of Aristotle's definition 
of tragedy. Epic poetry is an imitation of a grave 
and noble deed, perfect, complete, and of proper 
magnitude, with embellished language, but without 
music or dancing; at times simply narrating and 
at other times introducing persons in words and 
actions ; in order that, through pity and fear of the 
things imitated, such passions may be purged from 
the mind with both pleasure and profit.^ Here 
Minturno, like Giraldi Cintio, ascribes to epic 
poetry the same purgation of pity and fear effected 
by tragedy. Epic poetry he rates above tragedy, 
since the epic poet, more than any other, arouses 
that admiration of great heroes which it is the pe- 
culiar function of the poet to excite, and therefore 
attains the end of poetry more completely than any 
other poet. This, however, is true only in the high- 
est form of narrative poetry ; for Minturno distin- 
guishes three classes of narrative poets, the lowest, 
or bucolici, the mediocre, or epici, who have nothing 
beyond verse, and the highest, or heroici, who imi- 
tate the life of a single hero in noble verse.^ Min- 
turno insists fundamentally on the unity of the 
epic action ; and directly against Aristotle's state- 
ment, as we have seen, he restricts the duration of 
the action to one year. The license and prolixity 
1 Arte Poetica, p. 9. 2 j)^ Poeta, pp. 105, 106. 



IV.] THE TKEORY OF EPIC POETEY 111 

of the romanzi led the defenders of the classical 
epic to this extreme of rigid circumspection. Ac- 
cording to Scaliger, the epic, which is the norm by 
which all other poems may be judged and the chief 
of all poems, describes heroum genus, vita, gesta} 
This is the Horatian conception of the epic, and 
there is in Scaliger little or no trace of the Aristo- 
telian doctrine. He also follows Horace closely in 
forbidding the narrative poet to begin his poem 
from the very beginning of his story {ah ovo), and 
in various other details. 

Castelvetro (1570) differs from Aristotle in regard 
to the unity of the epic fable, on the ground that 
poetry is merely imaginative history, and can 
therefore do anything that history can do. Poetry 
follows the footsteps of history, differing merely in 
that history narrates what has happened, while 
poetry narrates what has never happened but yet 
may possibly happen ; and therefore, since history 
recounts the whole life of a single hero, without 
regard to its unity, there is no reason why poetry 
should not do likewise. The epic may in fact deal 
with many actions of one person, one action of a 
whole race, or many actions of many people; it 
need not necessarily deal with one action of one 
person, as Aristotle enjoins, but if it does so it is 
simply to show the ingenuity and excellence of the 
poet.^ 

1 Poet. iii. 95. 

2 Castelvetro, Poetica, p. 178 sg. 



112 LITEKARY CRITICISM m ITALY [chap. 

n. Epic and Romance 

This discussion of epic unity leads to one of the 
most important critical questions of the sixteenth 
century, — the question of the unity of romance. 
Ariosto's Orlando Furioso and Boiardo's Orlando 
Innamorato were written before the Aristotelian 
canons had become a part of the critical literature 
of Italy. When it became clear that these poems 
diverged from the fundamental requirements of the 
epic as expounded in the Poetics^ Trissino set out 
to compose an heroic poem which would be in per- 
fect accord with the precepts of Aristotle. His 
Italia Liberata, which was completed by 1548, was 
the result of twenty years of study, and it is the 
first modern epic in the strict Aristotelian sense. 
With Aristotle as his guide, and Homer as his 
model, he had studiously and mechanically con- 
structed an epic of a single action; and in the 
dedication of his poem to the Emperor Charles V. 
he charges all poems which violate this primary 
law of the single action with being merely bastard 
forms. The romanzi, and among them the Orlando 
Furioso, in seemingly disregarding this funda- 
mental requirement, came under Trissino's censure ; 
and this started a controversy which was not to end 
until the commencemeuo of the next century, and 
in a certain sense may be said to remain undecided 
even to this day. 

The first to take up the cudgels in defence of the 
writers of the romanzi was Giraldi Cintio, who in 
his youth had known Ariosto personally, and who 



IV.] THE THEORY OF EPIC POETRY 113 

wrote his Discorso intorno al comporre dei Momanziy 
in April, 1549. The grounds of his defence are 
twofold. In the first place, Giraldi maintains that 
the romance is a poetic form of which Aristotle did 
not know, and to which his rules therefore do not 
apply ; and in the second place, Tuscan literature, 
differing as it does from the literature of Greece in 
language, in spirit, and in religious feeling, need 
not and indeed ought not to follow the rules of 
Greek literature, but rather the laws of its own 
development and its own traditions. With Ariosto 
and Boiardo as models, Giraldi sets out to formu- 
late the laws of the romanzi. The romanzi aim at 
imitating illustrious actions in verse, with the pur- 
pose of teaching good morals and honest living, since 
this ought to be the aim of every poet, as Giraldi 
conceives Aristotle himself to have said.^ All 
heroic poetry is an imitation of illustrious actions, 
but Giraldi, like Castelvetro twenty years later, 
recognizes several distinct forms of heroic poetry, 
according as to whether it imitates one action of 
one man, many actions of many men, or many 
actions of one man. The first of these is the epic 
poem, the rules of which are given in Aristotle's 
Poetics. The second is the romantic poem, after 
the manner of Boiardo and Ariosto. The third is 
the biographical poem, after the manner of the 
Theseid and similar works- dealing with the whole 
life of a single hero. 

These forms are therefore to be regarded as three 
distinct and legitimate species of heroic poetry, the 

1 Giraldi Cintio, i. 11, 64. 

I 



114 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

first of them being an epic poem in tlie strict Aris- 
totelian sense, and the two others coming under the 
general head of romanzi. Of the two forms of 
romanzi, the biographical deals preferably with an 
historical subject, whereas the noblest writers of 
the more purely romantic form, dealing with many 
actions of many men, have invented their subject- 
matter. Horace says that an heroic poem should 
not commence at the very beginning of the heroes 
life ; but it is difficult to understand, says Giraldi, 
why the whole life of a distinguished man, which 
gives us so great and refined a pleasure in the works 
of Plutarch and other biographers, should not please 
us all the more when described in beautiful verse 
by a good poet.^ Accordingly, the poet who is 
composing an epic in the strict sense should, in 
handling the events of his narrative, plunge im- 
mediately in medias res. The poet dealing with 
many actions of many men should begin with the 
most important event, and the one upon which all 
the others may be said to hinge ; whereas the poet 
describing the life of a single hero should begin at 
the very beginning, if the hero spent a really heroic 
youth, as Hercules for example did. The poem 
dealing with the life of a hero is thus a separate 
genre, and one for which Aristotle does not attempt 
to lay down any laws. Giraldi even goes so far as 
to say that Aristotle ^ censured those who write the 
life of Theseus or Hercules in a single poem, not 
because they dealt with many actions of one man, 
but because they treated such a poem in exactly 
1 Giraldi Cintio, i. 24. » Poet. viii. 2. 



IV.] THE THEORY OF EPIC POETRY 115 

the same manner as those who dealt with a single 
action of a single hero, — an assertion which is of 
course utterly absurd. Giraldi then proceeds to 
deal in detail with the disposition and composition 
of the romanzi, which he rates above the classical 
epics in the efficacy of ethical teaching. It is the 
office of the poet to praise virtuous actions and to 
condemn vicious actions ; and in this the writers of 
the romanzi are far superior to the writers of the 
ancient heroic poems.^ 

Giraldi's discourse on the romanzi gave rise to a 
curious dispute with his own pupil, Giambattista 
Pigna, who published a similar work, entitled / 
Romanzi^ in the same year (1554). Pigna asserted 
that he had suggested to Giraldi the main argument 
of the discourse, and that Giraldi had adopted it as 
his own. Without entering into the details of this 
controversy, it would seem that the priority of 
Giraldi cannot fairly be contested.^ At all events, 
there is a very great resemblance between the works 
of Giraldi and Pigna. Pigna's treatise, however, 
is more detailed than Giraldi's. In the first book, 
Pigna deals with the general subject of the romanzi; 
in the second he gives a life of Ariosto, and dis- 
cusses the Furioso, point by point ; in the third he 
demonstrates the good taste and critical acumen of 
Ariosto by comparing the first version of the Furi- 
oso with the completed and perfected copy.^ Both 

1 Giraldi, i. 66 sq. 

2 Cf. Tiraboschi, vii. 947 sq., and Giraldi, ii. 153 sq. Pigna's 
own words are cited in Giraldi, i. p. xxiii. 

« Canello, p. 306 sq. 



116 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

Pigna and Giraldi consider the romanzi to consti- 
tute a new genre, unknown to the ancients, and 
therefore not subject to Aristotle's rules. Giraldi's 
sympathies were in favor of the biographical form 
of the romanzi, and his poem, the Ercole (1557), 
recounts the whole life of a single hero. Pigna, 
who keeps closer to the tradition of Ariosto, re- 
gards the biographical form as not proper to poetry, 
because too much like history. 

These arguments, presented by Giraldi and Pigna, 
were answered by Speroni, Minturno, and others. 
Speroni pointed out that while it is not necessary 
for the romantic poets to follow the rules prescribed 
by the ancients, they cannot disobey the funda- 
mental laws of poetry. "The romanzi,^^ says 
Speroni, "are epics, which are poems, or they are 
histories in verse, and not poems." ^ That is, how 
does a poem differ from a well-written historical 
narrative, if the former be without organic unity ? ^ 
As to the whole discussion, it may be said here, 
without attempting to pass judgment on Ariosto, or 
any other writer of romanzi, that unity of some 
sort every true poem must necessarily have ; and, 
flawless as the Orlando Furioso is in its details, the 
unity of the poem certainly has not the obviousness 
of perfect, and especially classical, art. A work of 
art without organic unity may be compared with 
an unsymmetrical circle ; and, while the Furioso is 
not to be judged by any arbitrary or mechanical 
rules of unity, yet if it has not that internal unity 
which transcends all mere external form, it may be 

1 Speroni, v. 521. 2 Cf. Minturno, De Poeta, p. 151. 



IV. J THE THEORY OF EPIC POETRY 117 

considered, as a work of art, hardly less than a 
failure; and the farther it is removed from per- 
fect unity, the more imperfect is the art. " Poetry 
adapts itself to its times, but cannot depart from its 
own fundamental laws.'^ ^ 

Minturno's answer to the defenders of the romanzi 
is more detailed and explicit than Speroni's, and it 
is of considerable importance because of its influ- 
ence on Torquato Tasso's conception of epic poetry. 
Minturno does not deny — and in this his point of 
view is identical with Tasso's — that it is possible 
to employ the matter of the romanzi in the composi- 
tion of a perfect poem. The actions they describe 
are great and illustrious, their knights and ladies 
are noble and illustrious, too, and they contain in a 
most excellent manner that element of the marvel- 
lous which is so important an element in the epic 
action. It is the structure of the romanzi with 
which Minturno finds fault. They lack the first 
essential of every form of poetry, — unity. In 
fact, they are little more than versified history or 
legend; and, while expressing admiration for the 
genius of Ariosto, Minturno cannot but regret that 
he so far yielded to the popular taste of his time as 
to employ the method of the romanzi. He approves 
of the suggestion of Bembo, who had tried to per- 
suade Ariosto to write an epic instead of a romantic 
poem,^just as later, and for similar reasons, Gabriel 
Harvey attempted to dissuade Spenser from con- 

1 Minturno, Arte Poetiea, p. 31. For various opinions on the 
unity of the Orlando Furioso, cf. Canello, p. 106, and Foffano, 
p. 59 sq. 2 j^rte Poetiea, p. 31. 



118 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ITALY 



C^.A.:^. 



tinning the Faerie Queene. Minturno denies that 
the Tuscan tongue is not well adapted to the com- 
position of heroic poetry ; on the contrary, there is 
no form of poetry to which it is not admirably 
fitted. He denies that the romantic poem can be 
distinguished from the epic on the ground that the 
actions of knights-errant require a different and 
broader form of narrative than do those of the 
classical heroes. The celestial and infernal gods 
and demi-gods of the ancients correspond with the 
angels, saints, anchorites, and the one God of Chris- 
tianity; the ancient sibyls, oracles, enchantresses, 
and divine messengers correspond with the modern 
necromancers, fates, magicians, and celestial angels. 
To the claim of the romantic poets that their poems 
approximate closer to that magnitude which Aris- 
totle enjoins as necessary for all poetry, Minturno 
answers that magnitude is of no avail without pro- 
portion ; there is no beauty in the giant whose limbs 
and frame are distorted. Finally, the romanzi are 
said to be a new form of poetry unknown to Aris- 
totle and Horace, and hence not amenable to their 
laws. But time, says Minturno, cannot change 
the truth ; in every age a poem must have unity, 
proportion, magnitude. Everything in nature is 
governed by some specific law which directs its 
operation ; and as it is in nature so it is in art, for 
art tries to imitate nature, and the nearer it ap- 
proaches nature in her essential laws, the better it 
does its work. In other words, as has already been 
pointed out, poetry adapts itself to its times, but 
cannot depart from its own laws. 



IV.] THE THEORY OF EPIC POETRl^ 119 

Bernardo Tasso, the father of Torquato, had origi- 
nally been one of the defenders of the classical 
epic ; but he seems to have been converted to the 
opposite view by Giraldi Cintio, and in his poem of 
the Amadigi he follows romantic models. (^His son 
Torquato, in his Discorsi deW Arte Poetica, origi- 
nally written one or two years after the appearance 
of Minturno's Arte Poetica, although not published 
until 1587, was the first to attempt a reconciliation 
of the epic and romantic forms; and he may be 
said to have effected a solution of the problem by 
the formulation of the theory of a narrative poem 
which would have the romantic subject-matter, with 
its delightful variety, and the epic form, with its 
essential unity. The question at issue, as we have 
seen, is that of unity ; that is, does the heroic poem 
need unity ? Tasso denies that there is any dif- 
ference between the epic poem and the romantic 
poem as poems. The reason why the latter is more 
pleasing, is to be found in the fact of the greater 
delightfulness of the themes treated.^ Variety in 
itself may be pleasing, for even a variety of disagree- 
able things may possibly please. But the perfect 
and at the same time most pleasing form of heroic 
poem would deal with the chivalrous themes of the 
romanzi, yet would possess that unity of structure 
which, according to the precepts of Aristotle and 
the practice of Homer and Virgil, is essential to 
every epic.^* There are two sorts of unity possible 
in art as in nature, — the simple unity of^ a chemi- 
cal element, and the complex unity of an organism 
1 T. Tasso, xii. 219 sq. 



120 A^rERAEY CRITic'A\5M IN ITALY [chap. 

like an animal or plant, — and of these the latter 
is the sort of unity that the heroic poet should aim 
at.^ Capriano (1555) had referred to this same dis- 
tinction, when he pointed out that poetry ought not 
to be the imitation of a single act, such as a single 
act of weeping in the elegy, or a single act of pas- 
toral life in the eclogue, for such a sporadic imita- 
tion is to be compared to a picture of a single hand 
without the rest of the body; on the contrary, 
poetry ought to be the representation of a number 
of attendant or dependent acts, leading from a 
given beginning to a suitable end.^ 

Having settled the general fact that the attrac- 
tive themes of the romanzi should be employed in a 
perfect heroic poem, we may inquire what particular 
themes are most fitted to the epic, and what must 
be the essential qualities of the epic material.^ In 
the first place, the subject of the heroic poem must 
be historical, for it is not probable that illustrious 
actions such as are dealt with in the epic should be 
unknown to history. The authority of history gains 
for the poet that semblance of truth necessary to 
deceive the Teader and make him believe that what 
the poet writes is true. Secondly, the heroic poem, 
according to Tasso, must deal with the history, not 
of a false religion, but of the true one, Christianity. 
The religion of the pagans is absolutely unfit for 
epic material ; for if the pagan deities are not in- 
troduced, the poem will lack the element of the 
marvellous, and if they are introduced it will lack 

1 T. Tasso, xii. 234. 3 t. Tasso, xii. 199 sq. 

2 Delia Vera Foetica, cap. iii 



IV.] THE THEORY OF EPIC POETRY 121 

the element of probability. Both the marvellous 
and the verisimile must exist together in a perfect 
epic, and difficult as the task may seem, they must 
be reconciled. Another reason why paganism is 
unfit for the epic is to be found in the fact that the 
perfect knight must have piety as well as other 
virtues. In the third place, the poem must not 
deal with themes connected with the articles of 
Christian faith, for such themes would be unalter- 
able, and would allow no scope to the free play of 
the poet's inventive fancy. Fourthly, the material 
must be neither too ancient nor too modern, for the 
latter is too well known to admit of fanciful changes 
with probability, and the former not only lacks 
interest but requires the introduction of strange 
and alien manners and customs. The times of 
Charlemagne and Arthur are accordingly best fitted 
for heroic treatment. Finally, the events them- 
selves must possess nobility and grandeur. Hence 
an epic should be a story derived from some event 
in the history of Christian peoples, intrinsically 
noble and illustrious, but not of so sacred a char- 
acter as to be fixed and immutable, and neither 
contemporary nor very remote. By the selection 
of such material the poem gains the authority of 
history, the truth of religion, the license of fiction, 
the proper atmosphere in point of time, and the 
grandeur of the events themselves.^ 

Aristotle says that both epic and tragedy deal 
with illustrious actions. Tasso points out that if 
the actions of tragedy and of epic poetry were both 
1 T. Tasso, xii. 208. 



122 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

illustrious in the same way, they would both pro- 
duce the same results ; but tragic actions move 
horror and compassion, while epic actions as a rule 
do not and need not arouse these emotions. The 
tragic action consists in the unexpected change of 
fortune, and in the grandeur of the events carrying 
with them horror and pity ; but the epic action is 
founded upon undertakings of lofty martial virtue, 
upon deeds of courtesy, piety, generosity, none of 
which is proper to tragedy. Hence the characters 
in epic poetry and in tragedy, though both of the 
same regal and supreme rank, differ in that the 
tragic hero is neither perfectly good nor entirely 
bad, as Aristotle says, while the epic hero must 
have the very height of virtue, such as ^neas, the 
type of piety, Amadis, the type of loyalty, Achilles, 
of martial virtue, and Ulysses, of prudence. 

Having formulated these theories of heroic poetry 
in his youth, Tasso set out to carry them into prac- 
tice, and his famous Gerusalemme Liberata was the 
result. This poem, almost immediately after its 
publication, started a violent controversy, which 
raged for many years, and which may be regarded 
as the legitimate outcome of the earlier dispute in 
connection with the romanzi} The Gerusalemme 
was in fact the centre of critical activity during the 
latter part of the century. Shortly after its publi- 
cation, Camillo Pellegrino published a dialogue, en- 

1 Accounts of this famous controversy will be found in Tira- 
boschi, Canello, Serassi, etc. ; but the latest and most complete 
is that given in the twentieth chapter of Solerti's monumental 
Vita di Torquato Tasso, Torino, 1895. 



IV.] THE THEORY OF EPIC POETRY 123 

titled 11 Caraffa (1583), in whicli the Gerusalemme is 
compared with the Orlando Furioso, much to the 
advantage of the former. Pellegrino finds fault 
with Ariosto on account of the lack of unity of his 
poem, the immoral manners imitated, and various 
imperfections of style and language ; and in all of 
these things, unity, morality, and style, he finds 
Tasso's poem perfect. This was naturally the 
signal for a heated and long-continued controversy, 
The Accademia della Crusca had been founded at 
Florence, in 1582, and it seems that the members of 
the new society felt hurt at some sarcastic remarks 
regarding Florence in one of Tasso's dialogues. 
Accordingly, the head of the academy, Lionardo 
Salviati, in a dialogue entitled L' Infarinato, wrote 
an ardent defence of Ariosto; and an acrid and 
undignified dispute between Tasso and Salviati 
was begun.^ Tasso answered the Accademia della 
Crusca in his Apologia; and at the beginning of the 
next century, Paolo Beni, the commentator on Aris- 
totle's Poetics, published his Comparazione di 
Omero, Virgilio, e Torquato, in which Tasso is rated 
above Homer, Virgil, and Ariosto, not only in 
dignity, in beauty of style, and in unity of fable, 
but in every other quality that may be said to con- 
stitute perfection in poetry. Before dismissing 
this whole matter, it should be pointed out that the 
defenders of Ariosto had absolutely abandoned 
the position of Giraldi and Pigna, that the romanzi 

1 Nearly all the important documents of the Tasso contro- 
versy are reprinted in Rosini's edition of Tasso, Opere, vols, 
xviii.-xxiii. 



124 LITERAEY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. iv. 

constitute a genre by themselves, and are therefore 
not subject to Aristotle's law of unity. The ques- 
tion as Giraldi had stated it was this : Does every 
poem need to have unity ? The question as dis- 
cussed in the Tasso controversy had changed to 
this form : What is unity ? It was taken for 
granted by both sides in the controversy that every 
poem must have organic unity ; and the authority 
of Aristotle, in epic as in dramatic poetry, was 
henceforth supreme. It was to the authority of 
Aristotle that Tasso's opponents appealed; and 
Salviati, merely for the purpose of undermining 
Tasso's pretensions, wrote an extended commentary 
on the Poetics, which still lies in Ms. at Florence, 
and which has been made use of in the present 
essay.^ 

1 The question of unity was also raised in another controversy 
of the second half of the sixteenth century. A passage in 
Varchi's Ercolano (1570), rating Dante above Homer, started 
a controversy on the Divine Comedy. The most important out- 
come of this dispute was Mazzoni's Difesa di Dante (1573), in 
which a more or less novel theory of poetry is expounded in 
order to defend the great Tuscan poet. 



CHAPTER V 

THE GROWTH OF THE CLASSIC SPIRIT IN ITALIAN 

CRITICISM 

The growth of classicism in Eenaissance criti- 
cism was due to three causes, — humanism, or the 
imitation of the classics, Aristotelianism, or the 
influence of Aristotle's Poetics, and rationalism, or 
the authority of the reason, the result of the growth 
of the modern spirit in the arts and sciences. These 
three causes are at the bottom of Italian classicism, 
as well as of French classicism during the seven- 
teenth century. 

I. Humanism 

The progress of humanism may be distinguished 
by an arbitrary but more or less practical division 
into four periods. The first period was character- 
ized by the discovery and accumulation of classical 
literature, and the second period was given up to 
the arrangement and translation of the works thus 
discovered. The third period is marked by the 
formation of academies, in which the classics were 
studied and humanized, and which as a result pro- 
duced a special cult of learning. The fourth and 
last period is marked by the decline of pure erudi- 
125 



126 LITEKAKY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

tion, and the beginning of aesthetic and stylistic 
scholarship.^ The practical result of the revival of 
learning and the progress of humanism was thus the 
study and imitation of the classics. To this imita- 
tion of classical literature all that humanism gave to 
the modern world may be ultimately traced. The 
problem before us, then, is this : What was the 
result of this imitation of the classics, in so far as it 
regards the literary criticism of the Eenaissance ? 
• In the first place, the imitation of the classics 
resulted in the study and cult of external form. 
Elegance, polish, clearness of design, became ob- 
jects of study for themselves ; and as a result we 
have the formation of aesthetic taste, and the growth 
of a classic purism, to which many of the literary 
tendencies of the Eenaissance may be traced.'^ 
Under Leo X. and throughout the first half of 
the sixteenth century, the intricacies of style and 
versification were carefully studied. Vida was the 
first to lay down laws of imitative harmony ; ^ 
Bembo, and after him Dolce and others, studied 
the poetic effect of different sounds, and the ono- 
matopoeic value of the varioas vowels and con- 
sonants ; * Claudio Tolomei attempted to introduce 
classical metres into the vernacular ; ^ Trissino pub- 
lished subtle and systematic researches in Tuscan 

1 Symonds, ii. 161, based on Voigt. 

2 Cf. Woodward, p. 210 sq. 

8 Hallam, Lit. of Europe, i. 8. 1. Cf. Pope, i. 182: " Omnia 
sed numeris vocum concordibus aptant," etc. 

^ Bembo, ie Prose, 1525; Dolce, Osservationi, 1550, lib. iv.; 
etc. 

fi Versi e Regale de la Nuova Poesia Toscana, 1539. 



v.] GROWTH OF THE CLASSIC SPIRIT 127 

language and versification.^ Later, the rhetorical 
treatises of Cavalcanti (1565), Lionardi (1554), and 
Partenio (1560), and the more practical manuals of 
Fanucci (1533), Equicola (1541), and Euscelli (1559), 
all testify to the tremendous impulse which the imi- 
tation of the classics had given to the study of form 
both in classical and vernacular literatures. 

In Vida's Ars Poetica there are abundant evi- 
dences of the rhetorical and especially the puristic 
tendencies of modern classicism. The mechanical 
conception of poetic expression, in which imagi- 
nation, sensibility, and passion are subjected to the 
elaborate and intricate precepts of art, is every- 
where found in Yida's poem. Like Horace, Vida 
insists on long preparation for the composition of 
poetry, and warns the poet against the indulgence 
of his first impulses. He suggests as a preparation 
for the composition of poetry, that the poet should 
prepare a list of phrases and images for use when- 
ever occasion may demand.^ He impresses upon 
the poet the necessity of euphemistic expressions 
in introducing the subject of his poem; for ex- 
ample, the name of Ulysses should not be men- 
tioned, but he should be referred to as one who 
has seen many men and many cities, who has suf- 
fered shipwreck on the return from Troy, and the 
like.^ In such mechanical precepts as these, the 
rhetoric of sevent6enth-century classicism is antici- 

1 Trissino, Poetica, lib. i.-iv., 1529; Tomitano, Delia Lingua 
Toscana, 1545 ; etc. 

2 Pope, i. 134. Cf. De Sanctis, ii. 153 sq. 

3 Pope, i. 152. 



128 LITEKARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

pated. Its restraint, its purity, its mechanical side, 
are everywhere visible in Yida. A little later, in 
Daniello, we find similar puristic tendencies. He 
requires the severe separation of genres, decorum 
and propriety of characterization, and the exclusion 
of everything disagreeable from the stage. In Par- 
tenio's Delia Imitatione Poetica (1560), the poet is 
expressly forbidden the employment of the ordinary 
words in daily use,^ and elegance of form is especially 
demanded. Partenio regards form as of superior 
importance to subject or idea; for those who hear 
or read poetry care more for beauty of diction than 
for character or even thought.^ 

It is on merely rhetorical grounds that Partenio 
distinguishes excellent from mediocre poetry. The 
good poet, unlike the bad one, is able to give splen- 
dor and dignity to the most trivial idea by means 
of adornments of diction and disposition. This 
conception seems to have particularly appealed to 
the Eenaissance; and Tasso gives expression to a 
similar notion when he calls it the poet's noblest 
function *^to make of old concepts new ones, to 
make of vulgar concepts noble ones, and to make 
common concepts his own." ^ In a higher and more 
ideal sense, poetry, according to Shelley, '^ makes 
familiar objects be as if they were not familiar."* 

It is in keeping with this rhetorical ideal of 
classicism that Scaliger makes electio et sui fasti- 
dium the highest virtues of the poet.^ All that is 

1 Partenio, p. 80. * Defence, p. 13, 

2 Ibid. p. 95. 6 Poet. v. 3. 
8 Opere, xi. 51. 



v.] GROWTH OF THE CLASSIC SPIRIT 129 

merely popular (plebeium) in thought and expres- 
sion is to be minutely avoided ; for only that which 
proceeds from solid erudition is proper to art. The 
basis of artistic creation is imitation and judgment; 
for every artist is at bottom somewhat of an echo.-^ 
Grace, decorum, elegance, splendor are the chief 
excellences of poetry and the life of all excellence 
lies in measure, that is, moderation and proportion. 
It is in the spirit of this classical purism that 
Scaliger minutely distinguishes the various rhetori- 
cal and grammatical figures, and carefully estimates 
their proper place and function in poetry. His 
analysis and systematization of the figures were 
immediately accepted by the scholars and gram- 
marians of his time, and have played a large part in 
Erench education ever since. Another consequence 
of Scaliger's dogmatic teaching, the Latinization of 
culture, can only be referred to here in passing.^ 

A second result of the imitation of the classics was 
the paganization of Eenaissance culture. Classic art 
is at bottom pagan, and the Eenaissance sacrificed 
everything in order to appear classical.^ Not only 
did Christian literature seem contemptible when 
compared with classic literature, but the mere 
treatment of Christian themes offered numerous 
difficulties in itself. Thus Muzio declares that the 
ancient fables are the best poetic materials, since 
they permit the introduction of the deities into 
poetry, and a poem, being something divine, should 
not dispense with the association of divinity.'* To 

1 Poet. V. 1 ; vi. 4. s Symonds, ii. 395 sq. 

2 Cf. Brunetiere, p. 53. ^ Muzio, p. 94. 

K 



130 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

bring the God of Israel into poetry, to represent 
him, as it were, in the flesh, discoursing and argu- 
ing with men, was sacrilege ; and to give the events 
of poetic narrative divine authoritativeness, the 
pagan deities became necessities of Renaissance 
poetry. Savonarola, in the fifteenth century, and 
the Council of Trent, in the sixteenth, reacted 
against the paganization of literature, but in vain. 
Despite the Council of Trent, despite Tasso and Du 
Bartas, the pagan gods held sway over Parnassus 
until the very end of the classical period ; and in 
the seventeenth century, as will be seen, Boileau 
expressly discourages the treatment of Christian 
themes, and insists that the ancient pagan fables 
alone must form the basis of neo-classical art. 

A third result of the imitation of the classics 
was the development of applied, or concrete, criti- 
cism. If the foundations of literature, if the for- 
mation of style, can result only from a close and 
judicious imitation of classical literature, this prob- 
lem confronts us : Which classical authors are we to 
imitate ? An answer to this question involves the 
application of concrete criticism. A reason must 
be given for one's preferences ; in other words? 
they must be justified on principle. The literary 
controversies of the humanists, the disputes on the 
subject of imitation, of Ciceronianism, and what 
not, all tended in this direction. The judgment of 
authors was dependent more or less on individual 
impressions. But the longer these controversies 
continued, the nearer was the approach to a liter- 
ary criticism, justified by appeals to general prin- 



v.] GROWTH OF THE CLASSIC SPIRIT 13l 

ciples, which became more and more fixed and 
determined; so that the growth of principles, or 
criteria of judgment in matters of literature, is in 
reality coterminous with the history of the growth 
of classicism.^ 

But one of the most important consequences of 
the imitation of the classics was that this imita- 
tion became a dogma of criticism, and radically 
changed the relations of art and nature in so far as 
they touch letters and literary criticism. The 
imitation of the classics became, in a word, the 
basis of literary creation. Vida, for example, af- 
firms that the poet must imitate classical literature, 
for only by such imitation is perfection attainable 
in modern poetry. In fact, this notion is carried to 
such an extreme that the highest originality be- 
comes for Yida merely the ingenious translation of 
passages from the classic poets : — 

'*Haud minor est adeo virtus, si te audit Apollo, 
Inventa Argivum in patriam convertere vocem, 
Quam si tute aliquid intactum inveneris ante." 2 

Muzio, echoing Horace, urges the poet to study 
the classics by day and by night ; and Scaliger, as 
has been seen, makes all literary creation depend 
ultimately on judicious imitation: '^Nemo est qui 
non aliquid de Echo." As a result, imitation grad- 
ually acquired a specialized and almost esoteric 
meaning, and became in this sense the starting- 
point of all the educational theories of the later 

1 a/. Dennis, Select Works, 1718, 11. 417 sq. 

2 Pope, 1. 167. 



132 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

humanists. Tlie doctrine of imitation set forth by 
John Sturm, the Strasburg humanist, was particu- 
larly influential.-^ According to Sturm, imitation is 
not the servile copying of words and phrases ; it is "a 
vehement and artistic application of mind," which 
judiciously uses and transfigures all that it imitates. 
Sturm's theory of imitation is not entirely original, 
but comes through Agricola and Melanchthon from 
Quintilian.^ Quintilian had said that the greater 
part of art consists in imitation ; but for the hu- 
manists imitation became the chief and almost the 
only element of literary creation, since the litera- 
ture of their own time seemed so vastly inferior to 
that of the ancients. 

The imitation of the classics having thus become 
essential to literary creation, what was to be its re- 
lation to the imitation of nature ? The ancient 
poets seemed to insist that every writer is at bottom 
an imitator of nature, and that he who does not 
imitate nature diverges from the purpose and prin- 
ciple of art. A lesson coming from a source so 
authoritative as this could not be left unheeded by 
the writers of the Eenaissance, and the evolution of 
classicism may be distinguished by the changing 
point of view of the critics in regard to the relations 
between nature and art. This evolution may be 
traced in the neo-classical period through three dis- 
tinct stages, and these three stages may be indicated 
by the doctrines respectively of Vida, Scaliger, and 
Boileau. 

1 Laas, Die Paedagogik des Johannes Sturm, Berlin, 1872, 
p. 65 sq. 2 jnst. Orat. x. 2. 



v.] GROWTH OF THE CLASSIC SPIRIT 133 

Vida says tliat it is the first essential of literary- 
art to imitate the classics. This, however, does not 
prevent him from warning the poet that it is his 
first duty to observe and copy nature : — 

"Praeterea baud lateat te, nil conarier artem, 
Naturam nisi ut assimulet, propiusque sequatur." 

Eor Vida, however, as for the later classicists, nature 
is synonymous with civilized men, perhaps even 
further restricted to the men of the city and the 
court ; and the study of nature was hardly more for 
him than close observation of the differences of 
human character, more especially of the external 
differences which result from diversity of age, 
rank, sex, race, profession, and which may be 
designated by the term decorum,} The imita- 
tion of nature even in this restricted sense Vida 
requires on the authority of the ancients. The 
modern poet should imitate nature because the 
great classical poets have always acknowledged her 
sway : — 

" Hanc unam vates sibi proposuere magistram." 

Nature has no particular interest for Vida in itself. 
He accepts the classics as we accept the Scriptures ; 
and nature is to be imitated and followed because 
the ancients seem to require it. 

In Scaliger this principle is carried one stage 
farther. The poet creates another nature and other 
fortunes as if he were another God.^ Virgil espe- 
cially has created another nature of such beauty 
and perfection that the poet need not concern him- 
1 Pope, i. 165. 2 Poet. 1. 1. 



134 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

self witli the realities of life, but can go to tlie 
second nature created by Virgil for the subject- 
matter of his imitation. ^' All the things which 
you have to imitate, you have according to another 
nature, that is, Virgil." ^ In Virgil, as in nature, 
there are the most minute details of the foundation 
and government of cities, the management of armies, 
the building and handling of ships, and in fact all 
the secrets of the arts and sciences. What more 
can the poet desire, and indeed what more can he 
find in life, and find there with the same certainty 
and accuracy ? Virgil has created a nature far 
more perfect than that of reality, and one compared 
with which the actual world and life itself seem 
but pale and without beauty. What Scaliger 
stands for, then, is the substitution of the world of 
art instead of life as the object of poetic imitation. 
This point of view finds expression in many of the 
theorists of his time. Partenio, for example, asserts 
that art is a firmer and safer guide than nature ; 
with nature we can err, but scarcely with art, for 
art eradicates from nature all that is bad, while 
nature mingles weeds with flowers, and does not 
distinguish vices from virtues.^ 

Boileau carries the neo-classical ideal of nature 
and art to its ultimate perfection. According to 
him, nothing is beautiful that is not true, and noth- 
ing is true that is not in nature. Truth, for classi- 
cism, is the final test of everything, including beauty ; 
and hence to be beautiful poetry must be founded 
on nature. Nature should therefore be the poet's 
1 Poet. iii. 4. ^ Partenio, p. 39 sq. 



v.] GROWTH OF THE CLASSIC SPIRIT 135 

sole study, although for Boileau, as for Vida, nature 
is one with the court and the city. Now, in what 
way can we discover exactly how to imitate nature, 
and perceive whether or not we have imitated it 
correctly ? Boileau finds the guide to the correct 
imitation of nature, and the very test of its correct- 
ness, in the imitation of the classics. The ancients 
are great, not because they are old, but because 
they are true, because they knew how to see and 
to imitate nature ; and to imitate antiquity is there- 
fore to use the best means the human spirit has 
ever found for expressing nature in its perfection.^ 
The advance of Boileau's theory on that of Vida 
and Scaliger is therefore that he founded the 
rules and literary i)ractice of classical literature on 
reason and nature, and showed that there is nothing 
arbitrary in the authority of the ancients. For 
Vida, nature is to be followed on the authority 
of the classics; for Boileau, the classics are to 
be followed on the authority of nature and reason. 
Scaliger had shown that such a poet as Virgil 
had created another nature more perfect than that 
of reality, and that therefore we should imitate 
this more beautiful nature of the poet. Boileau, on 
the contrary, showed that the ancients were simply 
imitating nature itself in the closest and keenest 
manner, and that by imitating the classics the poet 
was not imitating a second and different nature, but 
was being shown in the surest way how to imitate 
the real and only nature. This final reconciliation 

1 Of. Brunetiere, p. 102 sq., and Lanson, Hist, de la Litt. fr., 
p. 494 sq. 



136 LITERAKY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

of the imitation of nature and the imitation of the 
classics was Boileau's highest contribution to the 
literary criticism of the neo-classical period. 

II. Aristotelianism 

The influence of Aristotle's Poetics is first visi- 
ble in the dramatic literature of the early sixteenth 
century. Trissino's Sofonisha (1515), usually ac- 
counted the first regular modern tragedy, Rucellai's 
Rosmunda (1516), and innumerable other tragedies 
of this period, were in reality little more than mere 
attempts at putting the Aristotelian theory of trag- 
edy into practice. The Aristotelian influence is 
evident in many of the prefaces of these plays, and 
in a few contemporary works of scholarship, such 
as the Antiquce Lectiones (1516) of Cselius E-hodi- 
ginus, whom Scaliger called omnium doctissimus 
proecejptor noster. At the same time, the Poetics 
did not immediately play an important part in the 
critical literature of Italy. From the time of Pe- 
trarch, Aristotle, identified in the minds of the 
humanists with the mediaeval scholasticism so ob- 
noxious to them, had lost somewhat of his suprem- 
acy; and the strong Platonic tendencies of the 
Eenaissance had further contributed to lower the 
prestige of Aristotelianism among the humanists. 
At no time of the Eenaissance, however, did Aris- 
totle lack ardent defenders, and Filelfo, for exam- 
ple, wrote in 1439, " To defend Aristotle and the 
truth seems to me one and the same thing." ^ In 
the domain of philosophy the influence of Aristotle 
1 Lettres grecques, ed. Legrand, 1892, p, 31. 



v.] GEOWTH or THE CLASSIC SPIRIT 137 

was temporarily sustained by tlie liberal Peripateti- 
cism of Pomponazzi ; and numerous others, among 
them Scaliger Mmself, continued the traditions of a 
modernized Aristotelianism. From this time, how- 
ever, Aristotle's position as the supreme philoso- 
pher was challenged more and more ; and he was 
regarded by the advanced thinkers of the Renais- 
sance as the representative of the mediaeval obscur- 
antism that opposed the progress of modern scien- 
tific investigation. 

But whatever of Aristotle's authority was lost in 
the domain of philosophy was more than regained 
in the domain of literature. The beginning of 
the Aristotelian influence on modern literary 
theory may be said to date from the year 1536, 
in which year Trincaveli published a Greek text 
of the Poetics, Pazzi his edition and Latin ver- 
sion, and Daniello his own Poetica. Pazzi's son, 
in dedicating his father's posthumous work, said 
that in the Poetics "the precepts of poetic art 
are treated by Aristotle as divinely as he has 
treated every other form of knowledge." In the 
very year that this was said, Ramus gained his 
Master's degree at the University of Paris by de- 
fending victoriously the thesis that Aristotle's doc- 
trines without exception are all false.^ The year 
1536 may therefore be regarded as a turning-point 
in the history of Aristotle's influence. It marks the 
beginning of his supremacy in literature, and the 
decline of his dictatorial authority in philosophy. 

1 "Qusecimque ab Aristotele dicta sint falsa et commentitia 
esse; " Bayle, Diet, s. y. Ramus, note C. 



138 LITEEARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

Between the year 1536 and the middle of the 
century the lessons of Aristotle's Poetics were be- 
ing gradually learned by the Italian critics and 
poets. By 1550 the whole of the Poetics had been 
incorporated in the critical literature of Italy, and 
Fracastoro could say that "Aristotle has received no 
less fame from the survival of his Poetics than from 
his philosophical remains."^ According to Bar- 
tolommeo Ricci, in a letter to Prince Alfonso, son of 
Hercules II., Duke of Ferrara, Maggi was the first 
person to interpret Aristotle's Poetics in public* 
These lectures were delivered some time before 
April, 1549. As early as 1540, Bartolommeo Lom- 
bardi, the collaborator of Maggi in his commentary 
on the Poetics, had intended to deliver public lec- 
tures on the Poetics before a Paduan academy, but 
died before accomplishing his purpose.^ Numerous 
public readings on the subject of Aristotle and 
Horace followed those of Maggi, — among them 
those by Varchi, Giraldi Cintio, Luisino, and Tri- 
fone Gabrielli; and the number of public read- 
ings on topics connected with literary criticism, and 
on the poetry of Dante and Petrarch, increased 
greatly from this time. 

The number of commentaries on the Poetics it- 
self, published during the sixteenth century, is 
really remarkable. The value of these commen- 
taries in general is not so much that they add any- 
thing to the literary criticism of the Renaissance, 
but that their explanations of Aristotle's meaning 

1 Fracastoro, i. 321. 2 Xiraboschi, vii. 1465. 

8 Maggi, dedication. 



v.] GROWTH OF THE CLASSIC SPIRIT 139 

were accepted by contemporary critics, and became 
in a way the source of all the literary arguments of 
the sixteenth century. Nor was their influence 
restricted merely to this particular period. They 
were, one might almost say, living things to the 
critics and poets of the classical period in France. 
Eacine, Corneille, and other distinguished writers 
possessed copies of these commentaries, studied 
them carefully, cited them in their prefaces and 
critical writings, and even annotated their own 
copies of the commentaries with marginal notes, of 
which some may be seen in the modern editions of 
their works. In the preface to Rapin's Reflexions 
sur VArt Poetique (1674) there is a history of liter- 
ary criticism, which is almost entirely devoted to 
these Italian commentators ; and writers like Chape- 
lain and Balzac eagerly argued and discussed their 
relative merits. 

Several of these Italian commentators have been 
alluded to already.^ The first critical edition of the 
Poetics was that of Robortelli (1548), and this was 
followed by those of Maggi (1550) and Yettori 
(1560), both written in Latin, and both exhibiting 
great learning and acumen. The first translation 
of the Poetics into the vernacular was that by Segni 
(1549), and this was followed by the Italian com- 
mentaries of Castelvetro (1570) and Piccolomini 
(1575). Tasso, after comparing the works of these 
two commentators, concluded that while Castelvetro 

1 In an appendix to this essay will be found an excerpt from 
Salviati's unpublished commentary on the Poetics, giving his 
judgment of the commentators who had preceded him. 



140 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

had greater erudition and invention, Piccolomini had 
greatermaturityof judgment, more learning, perhaps, 
with less erudition, and certainly learning more Aris- 
totelian and more suited to the interpretation of the 
Poetics} The two last sections of Trissino's Poetica, 
published in 1563, are little more than a paraphrase 
and transposition of Aristotle's treatise. But the 
curious excesses into which admiration of Aristotle 
led the Italian scholars may be gathered from a 
work published at Milan in 1576, an edition of the 
Poetics expounded in verse, Baldini's Ars Poetica 
Aristotelis versibus exposita. The Poetics was also 
adapted for use as a practical manual for poets and 
playwrights in such works as Eiccoboni's brief Com- 
pendium Artis Poeticce Aristotelis ad usum conjicien- 
dorum poematum (1591). The last of the great 
Italian commentaries on the Poetics to have a gen- 
eral European influence was perhaps Beni's, pub- 
lished in 1613; but this carries us beyond the 
confines of the century. Besides the published 
editions, translations, and commentaries, many 
others were written which may still be found in 
Ms. in the libraries of Italy. Eeference has 
already been made to Salviati's (1586). There are 
also two anonymous commentaries dating from this 
period in Ms. at Florence, — one in the Maglia- 
bechiana and the other in the Eiccardiana. The 
last work which may be mentioned here is Buona- 
mici's Discorsi Poetici in difesa d' Aristotele, in 
which Aristotle is ardently defended against the 
attacks of his detractors. 

1 Tasso, XV. 20. 



y.] GROWTH OF THE CLASSIC SPIRIT 141 

It was in Italy during this period that the literary 
dictatorship of Aristotle first developed, and it was 
Scaliger to whom the modern world owes the for- 
mulation of the supreme authority of Aristotle as a 
critical theorist. Fracastoro had likened the im- 
portance of Aristotle's Poetics to that of his philo- 
sophical treatises. Trissino had followed Aristotle 
verbally and almost literally. Varchi had spoken of 
years of Aristotelian study as an essential prerequi- 
site for every one who entered the field of literary 
criticism. Partenio, a year before the publication 
of Scaliger's Poetics, had asserted that everything 
relating to tragedy and epic poetry had been settled 
by Aristotle and Horace. But Scaliger went farther 
still. He was the first to regard Aristotle as the 
perpetual lawgiver of poetry. He was the first to 
assume that the duty of the poet is first to find out 
what Aristotle says, and then to obey these precepts 
without question. He distinctly calls Aristotle the 
perpetual dictator of all the arts : " Aristoteles im- 
perator noster, omnium bonarum artium dictator 
perpetuus."^ This is perhaps the first occasion in 
modern literature in which Aristotle is definitely 
regarded as a literary dictator, and the dictatorship 
of Aristotle in literature may, therefore, be dated 
from the year 1561. 

But Scaliger did more than this. He was the 
first apparently to attempt to reconcile Aristotle's 
Poetics, not only with the precepts of Horace and 
the definitions of the Latin grammarians, but with 
the whole practice of Latin tragedy, comedy, and 
1 Poet. vii. ii. 1. 



142 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

epic poetry. It was in the light of this recon- 
ciliation, or concord of Aristotelianism with the 
Latin spirit, that Aristotle became for Scaliger 
a literary dictator. It was not Aristotle that pri- 
marily interested him, but an ideal created by him- 
self, and founded on such parts of the doctrine of 
Aristotle as received confirmation from the theory 
or practice of Roman literature ; and this new ideal, 
harmonizing with the Latin spirit of the Eenais- 
sance, became in the course of time one of the founda- 
tions of classicism. The influence of Aristotelianism 
was further augmented by the Council of Trent, 
which gave to Aristotle's doctrine the same degree 
of authority as Catholic dogma. 

All these circumstances tended to favor the 
importance of Aristotle in Italy during the six- 
teenth century, and as a result the literary dicta- 
torship of Aristotle was by the Italians foisted on 
Europe for two centuries to come. From 1560 to 
1780 Aristotle was regarded as the supreme author- 
ity in letters throughout Europe. At no time, even 
in England, during and after that period, was there 
a break in the Aristotelian tradition, and the influ- 
ence of the Poetics may be found in Sidney and Ben 
Jonson, in Milton and Dryden, as well as in Shelley 
and Coleridge. Lessing, even in breaking away 
from the classical practice of the French stage, de- 
fended his innovations on the authority of Aristotle, 
and said of the Poetics, "I do not hesitate to 
acknowledge, even if I should therefore be held up 
to scorn in these enlightened times, that I con- 
sider the work as infallible as the Elements of 



T.] GROWTH OF THE CLASSIC SPIRIT 143 

Euclid." -^ In 1756, a dozen years before Lessing, one 
of the precursors of the romantic movement in Eng- 
land, Joseph Warton, had also said of the Poetics, 
" To attempt to understand poetry without having 
diligently digested this treatise would be as absurd 
and impossible as to pretend to a skill in geometry 
without having studied Euclid."^ 

One of the first results of the dictatorship of 
Aristotle was to give modern literature a body of 
inviolable rules for the drama and the epic; that 
is, the dramatic and heroic poets were restricted to 
a certain fixed form, and to certain fixed characters. 
Classical poetry was of course the ideal of the 
Renaissance, and Aristotle had analyzed the 
methods which these works had employed. The 
inference seems to have been that by following 
these rules a literature of equal importance could 
be created. These formulae were at the bottom of 
classical literature, and rules which had created 
such literatures as those of Greece and Eome could 
hardly be disregarded. As a result, these rules 
came to be considered more and more as essentials, 
and finally, almost as the very tests of literature; 
and it was in consequence of their acceptance 
as poetic laws that the modern classical drama 
and epic arose. The first modern tragedies and 
the first modern epics were hardly more than 
such attempts at putting the Aristotelian rules 
into practice. The cult of form during the Ee- 
naissance had produced a reaction against the 

1 Hamburg. Dramat. 101-104. 

2 Essay on Pope, 3d ed., i. 171. 



144 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

formlessness and invertebrate character of mediaeval 
literature. The literature of the Middle Ages was 
infinitely inferior to that of the ancients ; mediaeval 
literature lacked form and structure, classical litera- 
ture had a regular and definite form. Form then 
came to be regarded as the essential difference be- 
tween the perfect literatures of Greece and Rome, 
and the imperfect and vulgar literature of the 
Middle Ages ; and the deduction from this was that, 
to be classical, the poet must observe the form and 
structure of the classics. Minturno indeed says 
that "the precepts given of old by the ancient 
masters, and now repeated by me here, are to be 
regarded merely as common usage, and not as invi- 
olable laws which must serve under all circum- 
stances."^ But this was not the general conception 
of the Eenaissance. Muzio, for example, specifi- 
cally says : — 

" Queste legge ch' io scrivo e quest! esempi 
Sian, lettore, al tuo dir perpetua norma ; " 

and in another place he speaks of a precept he has 
given, as " vera, f erma, e inevitabil legge." ^ Scali- 
ger goes still further than this; for, according to 
him, even the classics themselves are to be judged 
by these standards and rules. " It seems to me," 
says Scaliger, "that we ought not to refer every- 
thing back to Homer, just as though he were the 
norm, but Homer himself should be referred to the 
norm." ^ In the modern classical period somewhat 



^Arte Foetica, p. 158. 2 Muzio, pp. 81 v., 76 v. 

3 Poet. i. 5. 



v.] GROWTH OF THE CLASSIC SPIRIT 145 

later, these rules were foiind to be based on 
reason : — 

"These rules of old, discovered not devised, 
Are nature still, but nature methodized." ^ 

But during the Eenaissance they were accepted ex 
cathedra from classical literature. 

The formulation of a fixed body of critical 
rules was not the only result of the Aristotelian 
influence. One of the most important of these 
results, as has appeared, was the rational justifica- 
tion of imaginative literature. With the introduc- 
tion of Aristotle's Poetics into modern Europe the 
Renaissance was first able to formulate a systematic 
theory of poetry ; and it is therefore to the redis- 
covery of the Poetics that we may be said to owe 
the foundation of modern criticism. It was on the 
side of Aristotelianism that Italian criticism had 
its influence on European letters; and that this 
influence was deep and widespread, our study of 
the critical literatures of France and England will 
in part show. The critics with whom we have been 
dealing are not merely dead provincial names; 
they influenced, for two whole centuries, not only 
Erance and England, but Spain, Portugal, and 
Germany as well. 

Literary criticism, in any real sense, did not be- 
gin in Spain until the very end of the sixteenth 
century, and the critical works that then appeared 
were wholly based on those of the Italians. Een- 
gifo's Arte Poetica Espanola (1592), in so far as it 
1 Pope, Essay on Criticism, 88. 



146 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

deals with the theory of poetry, is based on Aris- 
totle, Scaliger, and various Italian authorities, 
according to the author's own acknowledgment. 
Pinciano's PhilosopJiia Antigua Poetica (1596) is 
based on the same authorities. Similarly, Cascales, 
in his Tablas Foeticas (1616), gives as his authori- 
ties Minturno, Giraldi Cintio, Maggi, Riccoboni, 
Castelvetro, Eobortelli, and his own countryman 
Pinciano. The sources of these and all other works 
written at this period are Italian; and the fol- 
lowing passage from the Egemplar Poetico, written 
about 1606 by the Spanish poet Juan de la Cueva, 
is a good illustration, not only of the general influ- 
ence of the Italians on Spanish criticism, but of the 
high reverence in which the individual Italian 
critics were held by Spanish men of letters : — 

" De los primeros tiene Horacio el puesto, 
En numeros y estilo soberano, 
Qual en su Arte al mundo es manifesto. 
Escaligero [i.e. Scaliger] hace el paso llano 
Con general ensenamiento y guia, 

Lo mismo el docto Cintio [i.e. Giraldi Cintio] y Biperano.^ 
Maranta 2 es egemplar de la Poesia, 
Vida el norte, Pontano ^ el omamento, 

La luz Minturno qual el sol del dia 

Acuden todos a colmar sus vasos 

1 Viperano, author of De Poetica libri tres, Antwerp, 1579. 

2 Maranta, author of Lucullanx Qusestiones, Basle, 1564. 

8 Three writers of the Renaissance bore this name : G. Pon- 
tano, the famous Italian humanist and Latin poet, who died in 
1503 ; P. Pontano, of Bruges, the author of an Ars Versificatoria, 
published in 1520; and J. Pontanus, a Bohemian Jesuit, author 
of Institutiones Poeticse, first published at Ingolstadt in 1594, 
and several times reprinted. 



v.] GROWTH or THE CLASSIC SPIRIT 14T 

Al oceano sacro de Stagira [^^c. Aristotle], 
Donde se afirman los dudosos pasos, 
Se eterniza la troinpa y tierna lira." ^ 

The influence of the Italians was equally great 
in Germany. From Fabricius to Opitz, the criti- 
cal ideas of Germany were almost all borrowed, 
directly or indirectly, from Italian sources. Fabri- 
cius in his De Re Poetica (1584) acknowledges his 
indebtedness to Minturno, Partenio, Pontanus, and 
others, but above all to Scaliger ; and most of the 
critical ideas by which Opitz renovated modern Ger- 
man literature go back to Italian sources, through 
Scaliger, E,onsard, and Daniel Heinsius. No better 
illustration of the influence of the Italian critics 
upon European letters could be afforded than that 
given by Opitz's Buck von der deutsclien Poeterei.^ 

The influence of Italian criticism on the critical 
literature of France and England will be more or 
less treated in the remaining portions of this essay. 
It may be noted here, however, that in the critical 
writings of Lessing there is represented the climax 
of the Italian tradition in European letters, espe- 
cially on the side of Aristotelianism. Shelley repre- 
sents a similar culmination of the Italian tradition 
in England. His indebtedness to Sidney and Mil- 

1 Sedano, Parnaso Espanol, Madrid, 1774, viii. 40, 41. 

2 Cf. Berghoeffer, Opitz' Buck von der Poeterei, 1888, and 
Beckherrn, Opitz, Ronsard, und Heinsius, 1888. The first refer- 
ence to Aristotle's Poetics, north of the Alps, is to be found in 
Luther's Address to the Christian Nobles of the German Nation, 
1520. Schosser's Disputationes de Tragoedia, published in 1559, 
two years before Scaliger's work appeared, is entirely based on 
Aristotle's Poetics. 



148 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

ton, who represent the Italian influence in the 
Elizabethan age, and especially to Tasso, whom he 
continually cites, is very marked. The debt of 
modern literature to Italian criticism is therefore 
not slight. In the half century between Vida and 
Castelvetro, Italian criticism formulated three 
things : a theory of poetry, a rigid form for the 
epic, and a rigid form for the drama. These rigid 
forms for drama and epic governed the creative 
imagination of Europe for two centuries, and 
then passed away. But while modern aesthetics 
for over a century has studied the processes of 
art, the theory of poetry, as enunciated by the 
Italians of the sixteenth century, has not dimin- 
ished in value, but has continued to pervade the 
finer minds of men from that time to this. 

III. Rationalism 

The rationalistic temper may be observed in 
critical literature almost at the very beginning of 
the sixteenth century. This spirit of rationalism 
is observable throughout the Renaissance ; and its 
general causes may be looked for in the liberation 
of the human reason by the Eenaissance, in the 
growth of the sciences and arts, and in the reac- 
tion against mediaeval sacerdotalism and dogma. 
The causes of its development in literary criticism 
may be found not only in these but in several other 
influences of the period. The paganization of cul- 
ture, the growth of rationalistic philosophies, with 
their all-pervading influence on arts and letters, and 



y.] GROWTH OF THE CLASSIC SPIRIT 149 

moreover the influence of Horace's Ars Poetica, 
with its ideal of " good sense," all tended to make 
the element of reason predominate in literature and 
in literary criticism. 

In Yida the three elements which are at the 
bottom of classicism, the imitation of the classics, 
the imitation of nature, and the authority of reason, 
may all be found. Reason is for him the final test 
of all things : — 

" Semper nutu rationis eant res." i 
The function of the reason in art is, first, to serve 
as a standard in the choice and carrying out of the 
design, a bulwark against the operation of mere 
chance,2 and secondly, to moderate the expression 
of the poet's own personality and passion, a bul- 
wark against the morbid subjectivity which is the 
horror of the classical temperament.^ 

It has been said of Scaliger that he was the first 
modern to establish in a body of doctrine the 
principal consequences of the sovereignty of the 
reason in literature.^ That was hardly his aim, and 
certainly not his attainment. But he was, at all 
events, one of the first modern critics to affirm that 
there is a standard of perfection for each specific 
form of literature, to show that this standard may 
be arrived at a priori through the reason, and to 
attempt a formulation of such standard for each 
literary form. ^^Est in omni rerum genere unum 

1 Pope, i. 155. 

2 Loc. cit., beginning, " Nee te fors inopina regat." 
8 Pope, i. 164, beginning, " Ne tamen ah nimium." 
* Lintilhac, in Nouvelle Revue, Ixiv. 543. 



150 LITERARY CRITICISM: IN ITALY [chap. 

primum ac rectum ad cuius turn normam, turn ratio- 
iiem csetera dirigenda sunt." ^ This, the funda- 
mental assumption of Scaliger's Poetics, is also one 
of the basic ideas of classicism. Not only is there 
a standard, a norm, in every species of literature, 
but this norm can be definitely formulated and de- 
fined by means of the reason ; and it is the duty of 
the critic to formulate this norm, and the duty of 
the poet to study and follow it without deviating 
from the norm in any way. Even Homer, as we 
have seen, is to be judged according to this stan- 
dard arrived at through the reason. Such a method 
cuts off all possibility of novelty of form or expres- 
sion, and holds every poet, ancient or modern, great 
or small, accountable to one and the same standard 
of perfection. 

The growth and influence of rationalism in Ital- 
ian criticism may be best observed by the gradual 
effect which its development had on the element 
of Aristotelianism. In other words, rationalism 
changed the point of view according to which the 
Aristotelian canons were regarded in the Italian 
Kenaissance. The earlier Italian critics accepted 
their rules and precepts on the authority of Aris- 
totle alone. Thus Trissino, at the beginning of the 
fifth section of his Poetica, finished in 1549, al- 
though begun about twenty years before, says, "I 
shall not depart from the rules and precepts of the 
ancients, and especially Aristotle." ^ Somewhat 
later, in 1553, Varchi says, " Eeason and Aristotle 
are my two guides." ^ Here the element of the 
1 Scaliger, Poet. iii. 11. 2 Trissino, ii. 92. 3 Varchi, p. 600. 



v.] GEOWTH OF THE CLASSIC SPIRIT 151 

reason first asserts itself, but there is no intimation 
that the Aristotelian canons are in themselves 
reasonable. The critic has two guides, the individ- 
ual reason and the Aristotelian rules, and each of 
these two guides is to serve wherever the other is 
found wanting. This same point of view is found 
a decade later in Tasso, who says that the defenders 
of the unity of the epic poem have made " a shield 
of the authority of Aristotle, nor do they lack the 
arms afforded by the reason ; " ^ and similarly, in 
1583, Sir Philip Sidney says that the unity of time 
is demanded "both by Aristotle's precept and 
common reason." ^ Here both Tasso and Sidney, 
while contending that the particular law under dis- 
cussion is in itself reasonable, speak of Aristotle's 
Poetics and the reason as separate and distinct 
authorities, and fail to show that Aristotle himself 
based all his precepts upon the reason. In Denores, 
a few years later, the development is carried one 
stage farther in the direction of the ultimate classi- 
cal attitude, as when he speaks of " reason and 
Aristotle's Poetics, which is indeed founded on 
naught save reason." ^ This is as far as Italian 
criticism ever went. It was the function of neo- 
classicism in France, as will be seen, to show that 
such a phrase as " reason and Aristotle " is a con- 
tradiction in itself, that the Aristotelian canons 
and the reason are ultimately reducible to the same 
thing, and that not only what is in Aristotle will 

1 Tasso, xii. 217. 

2 Defense of Poesy, p. 48. 
8 Biscorso, 1587, p. 39 v. 



152 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

be found reasonable, but all that reason dictates for 
literary observance will be found in Aristotle. 

E-ationalism produced several very important re- 
sults in literature and literary criticism during the 
sixteenth century. In the first place, it tended to 
give the reason a higher place in literature than im- 
agination or sensibility. Poetry, it will be remem- 
bered, was often classified by Renaissance critics 
as one of the logical sciences ; and nothing could 
be in greater accord with the neo-classical ideal 
than the assertion of Yarchi and others that the 
better logician the poet is, the better he will be as 
a poet. Sainte-Beuve gives Scaliger the credit of 
having first formulated this theory of literature 
which subordinates the creative imagination and 
poetic sensibility to the reason ; ^ but the credit or 
discredit of originating it does not belong exclu- 
sively to Scaliger. This tendency toward the apo- 
theosis of the reason was diffused throughout the 
sixteenth century, and does not characterize any in- 
dividual author. The Italian critics of this period 
were the first to formulate the classical ideal that 
the standard of perfection may be conceived of by 
the reason, and that perfection is to be attained 
only by the realization of this standard. 

The rationalistic spirit also tended to set the seal 
of disapprobation on extravagances of any sort. 
Subjectivity and individualism came to be regarded 
more and more, at least in theory, as out of keep- 
ing with classical perfection. Clearness, reasonable- 
ness, sociableness, were the highest requirements 
1 Causeries du Lundi, iii. 44. 



v.] GROWTH OE THE CLASSIC SPIRIT 153 

of art ; and any excessive expression of the poet's 
individuality was entirely disapproved of. Man, 
not only as a reasonable being, but also as a social 
being, was regarded as the basis of literature. 
Boileau's lines : — 

" Que les vers ne soient pas votre ^ternel emploi ; 
Cultivez vos amis, soyez homme de foi ; 
C'est peu d'etre agr^able et charmant dans un livre, 
H faut savoir encore et converser et vivre," i 

were anticipated in Berni's Dialogo contra i Poeti, 
written in 1526, though not published until 1537. 
This charming invective is directed against the 
fashionable literature of the time, and especially 
against all professional poets. Writing from the 
standpoint of a polished and rationalistic society, 
Berni lays great stress on the fact that poetry is 
not to be taken too seriously, that it is a pastime, 
a recreation for cultured people, a mere bagatelle ; 
and he professes to despise those who spend all 
their time in writing verses. The vanity, the use- 
lessness, the extravagances, and the ribaldry of the 
professional poets receive his hearty contempt; 
only those who write verses for pastime merit ap- 
probation. "Are you so stupid," he cries, "as to 
think that I call any one who writes verses a 
poet, and that I regard such men as Yida, Pon- 
tano, Bembo, Sannazaro, as mere poets ? I do 
not call any one a poet, and condemn him as 
such, unless he does nothing but write verses, and 
wretched ones at that, and is good for nothing 
else. But the men I have mentioned are not 
1 Art Poa. iv. 121. 



154 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. v. 

poets by profession."^ Here the sentiments ex- 
pressed are those of a refined and social age, — 
the age of Louis XIV. no less than that of Leo X. 
The irreligious character of neo-classic art may 
also be regarded as one of the consequences of this 
rationalistic temper. The combined effect of hu- 
manism, essentially pagan, and rationalism, essen- 
tially sceptical, was not favorable to the growth 
of religious feeling in literature. Classicism, the 
result of these two tendencies, became more and 
more rationalistic, more and more pagan; and in 
consequence, religious poetry in any real sense 
ceased to flourish wherever the more stringent forms 
of classicism prevailed. In Boileau these tenden- 
cies result in a certain distinct antagonism to the 
very forms of Christianity in literature : — 

** C'est done bien vainement que nos auteurs d^^us, 
Bannissant de leurs vers ces ornemens regus, 
Pensent faire agir Dieu, ses saints et ses proph^tes, 
Comme ces dieux 6clos du cerveau des poetes ; 
Mettent k chaque pas le lecteur en enf er ; 
N'offrent rien qu'Astaroth, Belz^buth, Lucifer. 
De la foi d'un chr^tien les myst^res terribles 
D'ornemens ^gay^s ne sont point susceptibles ; 
L'^fevangile k I'esprit n'offre de tons cot^s 
Que penitence k faire et tourmens m^rit^s ; 
Et de vos fictions le melange coupable 
Meme k ses v^rit^s donne Pair de la fable." * 

1 Berni, p. 249. 

2 Art Po^t. ill. 193. Cf. Dryden, Discourse on Satire, in 
Works, xiii. 23 sq. 



CHAPTER VI 

ROMANTIC ELEMENTS IN ITALIAN CRITICISM 

In the Italian critical literature of the sixteenth 
century there are to be found the germs of ro- 
mantic as well as classical criticism. The develop- 
ment of romanticism in Eenaissance criticism is 
due to various tendencies, of ancient, of mediasval, 
and of modern origin. The ancient element is 
Platonism ; the mediaeval elements are Christian- 
ity, and the influence of the literary forms and 
the literary subject-matter of the Middle Ages; 
and the modern elements are the growth of na- 
tional life and national literatures, and the oppo- 
sition of modern philosophy to Aristotelianism. 

I. The Ancient Romantic Element 

As the element of reason is the predominant 
feature of neo-classicism, so the element of im- 
agination is the predominant feature of roman- 
ticism; and according as the reason or the im- 
agination predominates in Renaissance literature, 
there results neo-classicism or romanticism, while 
the most perfect art finds a reconciliation of both 
elements in the imaginative reason. According 
155 



156 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

to tlie faculty of reason, when made tlie basis of 
literature, the poet is, as it were, held down to 
earth, and art becomes the mere reasoned expres- 
sion of the truth of life. By the faculty of im- 
agination, the poet is made to create a new world 
of his own, — a world in which his genius is free 
to mould whatever its imagination takes hold of. 
This romantic doctrine of the freedom of genius, 
of inspiration and the power of imagination, in 
so far as it forms a part of Renaissance criticism, 
owes its origin to Platonism. The influence of 
the Platonic doctrines among the humanists has 
already been alluded to. Plato was regarded by 
them as their leader in the struggle against medi- 
sevalism, scholasticism, and Aristotelianism. The 
Aristotelian dialectic of the Middle Ages appealed 
exclusively to the reason; Platonism gave oppor- 
tunities for the imagination to soar to vague and 
sublime heights, and harmonize with the divine 
mysteries of the universe. As regards poetry and 
imaginative literature in general, the critics of the 
Eenaissance appealed from the Plato of the Be- 
public and the Laws to the Plato of the Ion, the 
Fhoedrus, and the Symposium. Beauty being the 
subject-matter of art, Plato's praise of beauty was 
transferred by the Eenaissance to poetry, and his 
praise of the philosopher was transferred to the 
poet. 

The Aristotelian doctrine defines beauty accord- 
ing to its relations to the external world ; that is, 
poetry is an imitation of nature, expressed in gen- 
eral terms. The Platonic doctrine, on the con- 



VI.] KOMANTIC ELEMENTS 157 

trary, is concerned with poetry, or beauty, in so 
far as it concerns the poet's own nature ; that is, 
the poet is divinely inspired and is a creator like 
God. Fracastoro, as has been seen, makes the Pla- 
tonic rapture, the delight in the true and essential 
beauty of things, the true tests of poetic power. 
In introducing this Platonic ideal of poetic beauty 
into modern literary criticism, he defines and dis- 
tinguishes poetry according to a subjective crite- 
rion; and it is according to whether the objective 
or the subjective conception of art is insisted upon, 
that we have the classic spirit or the romantic 
spirit. The extreme romanticists, like the Schle- 
gels and their contemporaries in Germany, entirely 
eliminate the relation of poetry to the external 
world, and in this extreme form romanticism be- 
comes identified with the exaggerated subjective 
idealism of Fichte and Schelling. The extreme 
classicists entirely eliminate the poet's personality ; 
that is, poetry is merely reasoned expression, a 
perfected expression of what all men can see in 
nature, for the poet has no more insight into life 
— no more imagination — than any ordinary, judi- 
cious person. 

The effects of this Platonic element upon Renais- 
sance criticism were various. In the first place, it 
was through the Platonic influence that the relation 
of beauty to poetry was first made prominent.^ Ac- 
cording to Scaliger, Tasso, Sidney, another world of 
beauty is created by the poet, — a world that 
possesses beauty in its perfection as this world 

^De Sanctis, ii. 193 sq. 



158 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

never can. The reason alone leaves no place for 
beauty; and accordingly, for the neo-classicists, art 
was ultimately restricted to moral and psychologi- 
cal observation. Moreover, Platonism raised the 
question of the freedom of genius and of the imagi- 
nation. Of all men, only the poet, as Sidney and 
others pointed out, is bound down and restricted by 
no laws. But if poetry is a matter of inspiration, 
how can it be called an art ? If genius alone suf- 
fices, what need is there of study and artifice ? 
For the extreme romanticists of this period, genius 
alone was accounted sufficient to produce the great- 
est works of poetry; for the extreme classicists, 
studious and labored art unaided by genius fulfilled 
all the functions of poetic creation; but most of 
the critics of the sixteenth century seem to have 
agreed with Horace that genius, or an inborn apti- 
tude, is necessary to begin with, but that it needs 
art and study to regulate and perfect it. Genius 
cannot suffice without restraint and cultivation. 

Scaliger, curiously, reconciles both classic and 
romantic elements. The poet, according to Scaliger, 
is inspired, is in fact a creator like God ; but poetry 
is an imitation (that is, re-creation) of nature, ac- 
cording to certain fixed rules obtained from the 
observation of the anterior expression of nature in 
great art. It is these rules that make poetry an 
art ; and these rules form a distinct neo-classic ele- 
ment imposed on the Aristotelian doctrine. 



VI.] EOMANTIC ELEMENTS 159 

II. Mediceval Elements 

The Middle Ages contributed to tlie poetic 
ideal of the Eenaissance two elements: romantic 
themes and the Christian spirit. The forms and 
subjects of mediaeval literature are distinctly ro- 
mantic. Dante's Divine Comedy is an allegorical 
vision ; it is almost unique in form, and has no 
classical prototype.^ The tendency of Petrarchism 
was also in the direction of romanticism. Its 
"conceits '' and its subjectivity led to an unclassical 
extravagance of thought and expression; and the 
Petrarchistic influence made lyric poetry, and ac- 
cordingly the criticism of lyric poetry, more roman- 
tic than any other form of literature or literary 
criticism during the period of classicism. It was 
for this reason that there was little lyricism in the 
classical period, not only in France, but wherever 
the classic temper predominated. The themes of 
the romanzi are also mediaeval and romantic; but 
while they are mediaeval contributions to literature,'^ 
they became contributions to literary criticism 
only after the growth of national life and the de- 
velopment of the feeling of nationality, both dis- 
tinctly modern. 

Some reference has already been made to the 
paganization of culture by the humanists. But 
with the growth of that revival of Christian sen- 
timent which led to the Eeformation, there were 
numerous attempts to reconcile Christianity with 

1 Of. Bosanquet, Hist, of JSsthetic, p. 152 sq. 

2 Cf. Foffano, p. 151 sq. 



160 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

pagan culture.^ Such, men as Picino and Pico della 
Mirandola attempted to harmonize Christianity and 
Platonic philosophy ; and under the great patron of 
letters, Pope Leo X., there were various attempts 
to harmonize Christianity with the classic spirit in 
literature. In such poems as Yida's Christiad and 
Sannazaro's De Partu Virgiriis, Christianity is cov- 
ered with the drapery of paganism or classicism. 

The first reaction against this paganization of cul- 
ture was, as has been seen, effected by Savonarola. 
This reaction was reenforced, in the next century, 
by the influence and authority of the Council of 
Trent ; and after the middle of the sixteenth cen- 
tury the Christian ideal plays a prominent part 
in literary criticism. The spirit of both Giraldi 
Cintio and Minturno is distinctly Christian. For 
Giraldi the romanzi are Christian, and hence supe- 
rior to the classical epics. He allows the introduc- 
tion of pagan deities only into epics dealing with 
the ancient classical subjects ; but Tasso goes 
further, and says that no modern heroic poet should 
have anything to do with them. According to 
Tasso, the heroes of an heroic poem must be Chris- 
tian knights, and the poem itself must deal with a 
true, not a false, religion. The subject is not to be 
connected with any article of Christian faith or 
dogma, because that was fixed by the Council of 
Trent ; but paganism in any form is altogether un- 
fit for a modern epic. Tasso even goes so far as to 
assert that piety shall be numbered among the 
virtues of the knightly heroes of epic poetry. 
1 Symonds, ii. 470. 



VI.] ROMANTIC ELEMENTS 161 

At the same time also, Lorenzo Gambara wrote Ms 
work, De Perfecta Poeseos Batione, to prove that it 
is essential for every poet to exclude from his 
poems, not only everything that is wicked or ob- 
scene, but also everything that is fabulous or that 
deals with pagan divinities.-^ It was to this reli- 
gious reaction that we owe the Christian poetry of 
Tasso, Du Bartas, and Spenser. But humanism 
was strong, and rationalism was rife ; and the re- 
ligious revival was hardly more than temporary. 
Neo-classicism throughout Europe was essentially 
pagan. 

III. Modern Elements 

The literature of the Middle Ages constitutes, as 
it were, one vast body of European literature ; only 
with the Eenaissance did distinctly national litera- 
tures spring into existence. Nationalism as well as 
individualism was subsequent to the Eenaissance ; 
and it was at this period that the growth of a 
national literature, of national life, — in a word, 
patriotism in its widest sense, — was first effected. 

The linguistic discussions and controversies of 
the sixteenth century prepared the way for a higher 
appreciation of national languages and literatures. 
These controversies on the comparative merits of 
the classical and vernacular tongues had begun in 
the time of Dante, and were continued in the six- 
teenth century by Bembo, Castiglione, Varchi, Muzio, 
Tolomei, and many others ; and in 1564 Salviati 
summed up the Italian side of the question in an 
1 Baillet, iii. 70. 



162 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

oration in which he asserted that the Tuscan, or, as 
he called it, the Florentine language and the Flor- 
entine literature are vastly superior to any other 
language or literature, whether ancient or modern. 
However extravagant this claim, may appear, the 
mere fact that Salviati made such a claim at all is 
enough to give him a place worthy of serious con- 
sideration in the history of Italian literature. The 
other side of the controversy finds its extremest 
expression in a treatise of Celio Calcagnini ad- 
dressed to Giraldi Cintio, in which the hope is 
expressed that the Italian language, and all the 
literature composed in that language, would be 
absolutely abandoned by the world.^ 

In Giraldi Cintio we find the first traces of purely 
national criticism. His purpose, in writing the 
discourse on the romanzi, was primarily to defend 
Ariosto, whom he had known personally in his 
youth. The point of view from which he starts is 
that the romanzi constitute a new form of poetry 
of which Aristotle did not know, and to which, 
therefore, Aristotle's rules do not apply. Giraldi 
regarded the romantic poems of Ariosto and Boi- 
ardo both as national and as Christian works ; and 
Italian literature is thus for the first time critically 
distinguished from classical literature in regard to 
language, religion, and nationality. In Giraldi's 
discourse there is no apparent desire either to un- 
derrate or to disregard the Poetics of Aristotle ; the 
fact was simply that Aristotle had not known the 
poems which deal with many actions of many men, 
1 Tiraboschi, vii. 1559. 



Ti.] EOMANTIC ELEMENTS 163 

and hence it would be absurd to demand tliat such 
poems should conform to his rules. The romanzi 
deal with phases of poetry, and phases of life, 
which Aristotle could not be expected to understand. 

A similar feeling of the distinct nationality of 
Italian literature is to be found in many of the 
prefaces of the Italian comedies of this period, ll 
Lasca, in the preface of the Strega (c. 1555), says 
that " Aristotle and Horace knew their own times, 
but ours are not the same at all. We have other 
manners, another religion, and another mode of 
life; and it is therefore necessary to make come- 
dies after a different fashion." As early as 1534, 
Aretino, in the prologue of his Cortegiana, warned 
his audience "not to be astonished if the comic 
style is not observed in the manner required, for 
we live after a different fashion in modern Eome 
than they did in ancient Athens." Similarly, Gelli, 
in the dedication of the JSporta (1543), justifies the 
use of language not to be found in the great sources 
of Italian speech, on the ground that "language, 
together with all other natural things, continually 
varies and changes." ^ 

Although there is in Giraldi Cintio no fundamen- 
tal opposition to AristotlCj it is in his discourse on 
the romanzi that there may be found the first at- 
tempt to wrest a province of art from Aristotle's 
supreme authority. Neither Salviati, who had 
rated the Italian language above all others, nor 
Calcagnini, who had regarded it as the meanest of 

1 Several similar extracts from Italian comic prologues may 
be found in Symonds, v. 533 sq. 



164 LITEKARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

all, had understood the discussion of the impor- 
tance of the Tuscan tongue to be concerned with 
the question of Aristotle's literary supremacy. It 
was simply a national question — a question as to the 
national limits of Aristotle's authority, just as was 
the case in the several controversies connected with 
Tasso, Dante, and Guarini's Pastor Fido} Castel- 
vetro, in his commentary on the Poetics, differs 
from Aristotle on many occasions, and does not 
hesitate even to refute him. Yet his reverence for 
Aristotle is great ; his sense of Aristotle's supreme 
authority is strong; and on one occasion, where 
Horace, Quintilian, and Cicero seem to differ from 
Aristotle, Castelvetro does not hesitate to assert 
that they could not have seen the passage of the 
Poetics in question, and that, in fact, they did not 
thorouglily understand the true constitution of a 
poet.^ 

The opposition to Aristotelianism among the 
humanists has already been alluded to. This op- 
position increased more and more with the develop- 
ment of modern philosophy. In 1536 Ramus had 
attacked Aristotle's authority at Paris. A few 
years later, in 1543, Ortensio Landi, who had been 
at the Court of France for some time, published his 
Paradossi, in which it is contended that the works 
which pass under the name of Aristotle are not 
really Aristotle's at all, and that Aristotle himself 
was not only an ignoramus, but also the most vil- 
lanous man of his age. " We have, of our own 
accord," he says, " placed our necks under the yoke, 
1 Foffano, p. 154 sq. 2 Poetica, p. 32. 



VI.] ROMANTIC ELEMENTS 165 

putting that vile beast of an Aristotle on a throne, 
and depending on his conclusions as if he were an 
oracle." ^ It is the philosophical authority of Aris- 
totle that Landi is attacking. His attitude is not 
that of a humanist, for Cicero and Boccaccio do not 
receive more respectful treatment at his hands than 
Aristotle does. Landi, despite his mere eccentrici- 
ties, represents the growth of modern free thought 
and the antagonism of modern philosophy to Aris- 
totelianism. 

The literary opposition and the philosophical op- 
position to Aristotelianism may be said to meet in 
Francesco Patrizzi, and, in a less degree, in Gior- 
dano Bruno. Patrizzi's bitter Antiperipateticism is 
to be seen in his Nova de Universis PhilosopMa 
(1591), in which the doctrines of Aristotle are 
shown to be false, inconsistent, and even opposed 
to the doctrines of the Catholic Church. His liter- 
ary antagonism to Aristotle is shown in his remark- 
able work, Delia Poetica, published at Ferrara in 
1586. This work is divided into two parts, — the first 
historical, La Deca Istoriale, and the second contro- 
versial, La Deca Disputata. In the historical sec- 
tion he attempts to derive the norm of the differ- 
ent poetic forms, not from one or two great works 
as Aristotle had done, but from the whole history 
of literature. It is thus the first work in modern 
times to attempt the philosophical study of literary 
history, and to trace out the evolution of literary 
forms. The second or controversial section is di- 
rected against the Poetics of Aristotle, and in part 
1 Paradossi, Venetia, 1545, ii. 29. 



166 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ITALY [chap. 

also against the critical doctrines of Torquato 
Tasso. In this portion of his work Patrizzi sets out 
to demonstrate — per istoria, e per ragioni, e per 
autoritci de! grandi antichi — that the accepted criti- 
cal opinions of his time were without foundation ; 
and the Poetics of Aristotle himself he exhibits 
as obscure, inconsistent, and entirely unworthy of 
credence. 

Similar antagonism to the critical doctrines of 
Aristotle is to be found in passages scattered here 
and there throughout the works of Giordano Bruno. 
In the first dialogue of the Eroici Furori, published 
at London in 1585, while Bruno was visiting Eng- 
land, he expresses his contempt for the mere ped- 
ants who judge poets by the rules of Aristotle's 
Poetics. His contention is that there are as many 
sorts of poets as there are human sentiments and 
ideas, and that poets, so far from being subservient 
to rules, are themselves really the authors of all 
critical dogma. Those who attack the great poets 
whose works do not accord with the rules of Aris- 
totle are called by Bruno stupid pedants and beasts. 
The gist of his argument may be gathered from the 
following passage : — 

" Tans. Thou dost well conclude that poetiy is not born 
in rules, or only slightly and accidentally so ; the rules are 
derived from the poetry, and there are as many kinds and 
sorts of true rules as there are kinds and sorts of true poets. 

Cio. How then are the true poets to be known ? 

Tans. By the singing of their verses ; in that singing 
they give delight, or they edify, or they edify and delight 
together. 



VI.] ROMANTIC ELEMENTS 167 

Cic. To whom then are the rules of Aristotle useful ? 

Tans. To him who, unlike Homer, Hesiod, Orpheus, and 
others, could not sing without the rules of Aristotle, and 
who, having no Muse of his own, would coquette with that 
of Homer." i 

A similar antagonism to Aristotle and a similar 
literary individualism are to be found in a much 
later work by Benedetto Fioretti, who under the 
pseudonym of Udeno Nisieli published the five vol- 
umes of his Proginnasmi Poetici between 1620 and 
1639.^ Just before the close of the sixteenth cen- 
tury, however, the Poetics had obtained an ardent 
defender against such attacks in the person of 
Francesco Buonamici, in his Discorsi Poetici; and 
three years later, in 1600, Faustino Summo published 
a similar defence of Aristotle. The attacks on 
Aristotle's literary dictatorship were of little avail ; 
it was hardly necessary even to defend him. For two 
centuries to come he was to reign supreme on the 
continent of Europe ; and in Italy this supremacy 
was hardly disturbed until the days of Goldoni 
and Metastasio. 

1 Opere, 11. 315 (Williams's translation). 

2 Cf. the diverse opinions of Tiraboschi, viii. 516, and Hallam, 
Lit. of Europe, pt. ill. eh. 7. 



Part Second 

LITERARY CRITICISM IN FRANCE 



LITERARY CRITICISM IN FRANCE 



CHAPTEE I 

THE CHARACTER AND DEVELOPMENT OF FRENCH 
CRITICISM IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 

Literary criticism in France, while beginning 
somewliat later than in Italy, preceded the birth of 
criticism in England and in Spain by a number of 
years. Critical activity in nearly all the countries 
of western Europe seems to have been ushered in 
by the translation of Horace's Ars Poetica into the 
vernacular tongues. Critical activity in Italy be- 
gan with Dolce's Italian version of the Ars Poetica 
in 1535; in France, with the French version of 
Pelletier in 1545; in England, with the English 
version of Drant in 1567 ; and in Spain, with the 
Spanish versions of Espinel and Zapata in 1591 and 
1592, respectively. Two centuries of literary dis- 
cussion had prepared the way for criticism in Italy ; 
and lacking this period of preparation, French criti- 
cism during the sixteenth century was necessarily 
of a much more practical character than that of 
Italy during the same age. The critical works of 
France, and of England also, were on the whole 
designed for those whose immediate intention it 
171 



172 LITERARY CRITICISM IN FRANCE [chap. 

was to write verse themselves. The disinterested 
and philosophic treatment of aesthetic problems, 
wholly aside from all practical considerations, char- 
acterized much of the critical activity of the Italian 
Kenaissance, but did not become general in France 
until the next century. For this reason, in the 
French and English sections of this essay, it will 
be necessary to deal with various rhetorical and 
metrical questions which in the Italian section 
could be largely disregarded. In these matters, as in 
the more general questions of criticism, it will be seen 
that sixteenth-century Italy furnished the source 
of all the accepted critical doctrines of western 
Europe. The comparative number of critical works 
in Italy and in France is also noteworthy. While 
those of the Italian Eenaissance may be counted by 
the score, the literature of France during the six- 
teenth century, exclusive of a few purely rhetorical 
treatises, hardly offers more than a single dozen. 
It is evident, therefore, that the treatment of 
French criticism must be more limited in extent 
than that of Italian criticism, and somewhat differ- 
ent in character. 

The literature of the sixteenth century in France 
is divided into two almost equal parts by Du 
Bellay's Defense et Illustration de la Langue fran- 
gaisef published in 1549. In no other country of 
Europe is the transition from the Middle Ages to 
the Eenaissance so clearly marked as it is in France 
by this single book. With the invasion of Italy by 
the army of Charles VIII. in 1494, the influence of 
Italian art, of Italian learning, of Italian poetry, 



I.] DEVELOPMENT OF FRENCH CRITICISM 173 

had received its first impetus in France. But over 
half a century was to elapse before the effects of 
this influence upon the creative literature of France 
was universally and powerfully felt. During this 
period the activity of Budseus, Erasmus, Dolet, and 
numerous other French and foreign humanists 
strengthened the cause and widened the influence 
of the New Learning. But it is only with the birth 
of the Pleiade that modern French literature may 
be said to have begun. In 1549 Du Bellay's 
Defense, the manifesto of the new school, appeared. 
Ronsard's Odes were published in the next year; 
and in 1552 Jodelle inaugurated French tragedy 
with Iiis Cleopdtre, and first, as Eonsard said, 

*' Frangoisement chanta la grecque tragMie.'* 

The Defense therefore marks a distinct epoch in the 
critical as well as the creative literature of France. 
The critical works that preceded it, if they may be 
called critical in any real sense, did not attempt to 
do more than formulate the conventional notions of 
rhetorical and metrical structure common to the 
French poets of the later Middle Ages. The 
Pleiade itself, as will be more clearly understood 
later, was also chiefly concerned with linguistic and 
rhetorical reforms ; and as late as 1580 Montaigne 
could say that there were more poets in France 
than judges and interpreters of poetry.^ The crea- 
tive reforms of the Pleiade lay largely in the direc- 
tion of the formation of a poetic language, the 
introduction of new genres, the creation of new 
1 Ussais, i. 36. 



174 LITERARY CRITICISM IN FRANCE [chap. 

rhythms, and the imitation of classical literature. 
But with the imitation of classical literature there 
came the renewal of the ancient subjects of inspira- 
tion; and from this there proceeded a high and 
dignified conception of the poet's of6.ce. Indeed, 
many of the more general critical ideas of the 
Pleiade spring from the desire to justify the func- 
tion of poetry, and to magnify its importance. The 
new school and its epigones dominate the second 
half of the sixteenth century ; and as the first half 
of the century was practically unproductive of criti- 
cal literature, a history of French Renaissance 
criticism is hardly more than an account of the 
poetic theories of the Pleiade. 

The series of rhetorical and metrical treatises 
that precede Du Bellay's Defense begins with UArt 
de dictier et de fere changons, halades, virelais et 
rondeaulx, written by the poet Eustache Deschamps 
in 1392, over half a century after the similar work 
of Antonio da Tempo in Italy.^ Toward the close 
of the fifteenth century a work of the same nature, 
the Fleur de Wietorique, by an author who refers to 
himself as L^Infortune, seems to have had some 
influence on later treatises. Three works of this 
sort fall within the first half of the sixteenth cen- 
tury : the Grand et vrai Art de pleine RMtorique of 
Pierre Fabri, published at Eouen in 1521; the 
RMtorique metrifiSe of Gracien du Pont, published 
at Paris in 1539 ; and the Art Poetique of Thomas 
Sibilet, published at Paris in 1548. The second 

1 On these early works, see Langlois, Be Artibus BhetoricsB 
RhythmicsB, Parisiis, 1890. 



I.] DEVELOPMENT OF FRENCH CRITICISM 175 

part of Fabri's EMtorique deals with questions of 
versification — of rhyme, rhythm, and the complex 
metrical form of such poets as Cretin, Meschinot, 
and Molinet, in whom Pasquier found prou de rime 
et equivoque, mais peu de raison. As the Bhetorique 
of Fabri is little more than an amplification of 
the similar work of L'Infortune, so the work of 
Gracien du Pont is little more than a reproduc- 
tion of Fabri's. Gracien du Pont is still chiefly 
intent on rime equivoquee, rime entrelac^e, rime 
retrograde, rime concatenee, and the various other 
mediaeval complexities of versification. Sibilet's 
Art Poetique is more interesting than any of its 
predecessors. It was published a year before 
the Defense of Du Bellay, and discusses many 
of the new genres which the latter advocates. 
Sibilet treats of the sonnet, which had recently 
been borrowed from the Italians by Mellin de 
Saint-Gelais, the ode, which had just been employed 
by Pelletier, and the epigram, as practised by 
Marot. The eclogue is described as "Greek by 
invention, Latin by usurpation, and French by imi- 
tation." But one of the most interesting passages 
in Sibilet's book is that in which the French moral- 
ity is compared with the classical drama. This 
passage exhibits perhaps the earliest trace of the 
influence of Italian ideas on French criticism; it 
will be discussed later in connection with the dra- 
matic theories of this period. 

It is about the middle of the sixteenth century, 
then, that the influence of Italian criticism is first 
visible. The literature of Italy was read with 



176 LITERARY CRITICISM IN FRANCE [chap. 

avidity in France. Many educated young French- 
men travelled in Italy, and several Italian men of 
letters visited France. Girolamo Muzio travelled 
in France in 1524, and again in 1530 with Giulio 
Cammillo.^ Aretino mentions the fact that a Vin- 
cenzo Maggi was at the Court of France in 1548, 
but it has been doubted whether this was the 
author of the commentary on the Poetics.'^ In 1549, 
after the completion of the two last parts of his 
Poetica, dedicated to the Bishop of Arras, Trissino 
made a tour about France.^ Nor must we forget 
the number of Italian scholars called to Paris by 
Francis I.* The literary relations between the 
two countries do not concern us here ; but it is no 
insignificant fact that the great literary reforms of 
the Pleiade should take place between 1548 and 
1550, the very time when critical activity first 
received its great impetus in Italy. This Italian 
influence is just becoming apparent in Sibilet, for 
whom the poets between Jean le Maire de Beiges 
and Clement Marot are the chief models, but who 
is not wholly averse to the moderate innovations 
derived by France from classical antiquity and the 
Italian Renaissance. 

M. Brunetiere, in a very suggestive chapter of 
his History of French Criticism, regards the De- 
fense of Du Bellay, the Poetics of Scaliger, and the 
Art Poetique of Vauquelin de la Fresnaye as the 
most important critical works in France during 



1 Tiraboschi, vii. 350. ^ Morsolin, Trissino, p. 358. 

a Ihid. vii. 1466. * Egger, HelUnisme, ch. vii. 



I.] DEVELOPMENT OF FRENCH CRITICISM 177 

the sixteenth, century.^ It may indeed be said that 
Du Bellay's Defense (1549) is not in any true sense 
a work of literary criticism at all ; that Scaliger's 
Poetics (1561) is the work, not of a French critic, 
but of an Italian humanist ; and that Vauquelin's 
Art Poetique (not published until 1605), so far as 
any influence it may have had is concerned, does 
not belong to the sixteenth century, and can hardly 
be called important. At the same time these three 
works are interesting documents in the literary 
history of France, and represent three distinct 
stages in the development of French criticism in 
the sixteenth century. Du Bellay's work marks 
the beginning of the introduction of classical ideals 
into French literature ; Scaliger's work, while writ- 
ten by an Italian and in Latin, was composed and 
published in France, and marks the introduction 
of the Aristotelian canons into French criticism; 
and Vauquelin's work indicates the sum of critical 
ideas which France had gathered and accepted in 
the sixteenth century. 

With Du Bellay's Defense et Plustration de la 
Langue frangaise (1549) modern literature and 
modern criticism in France may be said to begin. 
The Defense is a monument of the influence of 
Italian upon French literary and linguistic criti- 
cism. The purpose of the book, as its title implies, 
is to defend the French language, and to indicate 
the means by which it can approach more closely 
to dignity and perfection. The fundamental con- 
tention of Du Bellay is, first, that the French 

1 Brunetiere, i. 43. 
N 



178 LITERARY CRITICISM IN FRANCE [chap. 

language is capable of attaining perfection; and, 
secondly, that it can only hope to do so by imitat- 
ing Greek and Latin. This thesis is propounded 
and proved in the first book of the Defense; and 
the second book is devoted to answering the ques- 
tion: By what specific means is this perfection, 
based on the imitation of the perfection of Greek 
and Latin, to be attained by the French tongue ? 
Du Bellay contends that as the diversity of lan- 
guage among the different nations is ascribable 
entirely to the caprice of men, the perfection of 
any tongue is due exclusively to the diligence and 
artifice of those who use it. It is the duty, there- 
fore, of every one to set about consciously to improve 
his native speech. The Latin tongue was not al- 
ways as perfect as it was in the days of Virgil and 
Cicero ; and if these writers had regarded language 
as incapable of being polished and enriched, or if 
they had imagined that their language could only 
be perfected by the imitation of their own national 
predecessors, Latin would never have arrived at a 
higher state of perfection than that of Ennius and 
Crassus. But as Virgil and Cicero perfected Latin 
by imitating Greek, so the French tongue can only 
be made beautiful by imitating Greek, Latin, and 
Italian, all of which have attained a certain share 
of perfection.^ 

At the same time, two things must be guarded 

against. The French tongue cannot be improved by 

merely translating the classic and Italian tongues. 

Translation has its value in popularizing ideas j but 

1 Cf. Horace, Ars Poet. 53 sq. 



I.] DEVELOPMENT OF FRENCH CllITICISM 179 

by mere translation no language or literature can 
hope to attain perfection. Nor is a mere bald imita- 
tion sufficient ; but, in Du Bellay's oft-cited phrase, 
the beauties of these foreign tongues " must be con- 
verted into blood and nourishment. " ^ The classics 
have "blood, nerves, and bones," while the older 
French writers have merely "skin and color." ^ 
The modern French writer should therefore dis- 
miss with contempt the older poets of France, and 
set about to imitate the Greeks, Latins, and Italians. 
He should leave off composing rondeaux, ballades, 
virelays, and such epiceries, which corrupt the taste 
of the French language, and serve only to show its 
ignorance and poverty ; and in their stead he should 
employ the epigram, which mingles, in Horace's 
words, the profitable with the pleasant, the tearful 
elegy, in imitation of Ovid and Tibullus, the ode, 
one of the sublimest forms of poetry, the eclogue, in 
imitation of Theocritus, Virgil, and Sannazaro, 
and the beautiful sonnet, an Italian invention no 
less learned than pleasing.^ Instead of the morality 
and the farce, the poet should write tragedies and 
comedies ; he should attempt another Iliad or 
u^neid for the glory and honor of France. This 
is the gist of Du Bellay's argument in so far as it 
deals in general terms with the French language 
and literature. The six or seven concluding chap- 
ters treat of more minute and detailed questions of 
language and versification. Du Bellay advises the 
adoption of classical words as a means of enriching 
the French tongue, and speaks with favor of the 
1 Defense, i. 7. 2 /ji^. n 2. s jbid. ii. 4. 



180 LITERARY CRITICISM IN FRANCE [chap. 

use of rhymeless verse in imitation of the classics. 
The Defense ends with an appeal to the reader not 
to fear to go and despoil Greece and Rome of their 
treasures for the benefit of French poetry.^ 

From this analysis it will be seen that the De- 
fense is really a philological polemic, belonging to 
the same class as the long series of Italian discus- 
sions on the vulgar tongue which begins with 
Dante, and which includes the works of Bembo, 
Castiglione, Varchi, and others. It is, as a French 
critic has said, a combined pamphlet, defence, and 
ars poetica ; ^ but it is only an ars poetica in so far 
as it advises the French poet to employ certain 
poetic forms, and treats of rhythm and rhyme in a 
concluding chapter or two. But curiously enough, 
the source and inspiration of Du Bellay's work have 
never been pointed out. The actual model of the 
Defense was without doubt Dante's De Vulgari 
Eloquio, which, in the Italian version of Trissino, 
had been given to the world for the first time in 
1529, exactly twenty years before the Defense. 
The two works, allowing for the difference in time 
and circumstance, resemble each other closely in 
spirit and purpose as well as in contents and de- 
sign. Du Bellay's work, like Dante's, is divided 
into two books, each of which is again divided into 
about the same number of chapters. The first book 
of both works deals with language in general, and 
the relations of the vulgar tongue to the ancient 
and modern languages ; the second book of both 
works deals with the particular practices of the 
1 Cy. Vida, in Pope, i. 167. 2 Lanson, op. cit., p. 274. 



I.] DEVELOPMENT OF FRENCH CKITICISM 181 

vulgar tongue concerning which, each author is 
arguing. Both works begin with a somewhat 
similar theory of the origin of language ; both 
works close with a discussion of the versification of 
the vernacular. The purpose of both books is the 
justification of the vulgar tongue, and the consid- 
eration of the means by which it can attain per- 
fection ; the title of De Vulgari Eloquio might be 
applied with equal force to either treatise. The 
Defense, by this justification of the French language 
on rational if not entirely cogent and consistent 
grounds, prepared the way for critical activity in 
France; and it is no insignificant fact that the first 
critical work of modern France should have been 
based on the first critical work of modern Italy. 
Thirty years later, Henri Estienne, in his Precel- 
lence du Langage frangois, could assert that French 
is the best language of ancient or modern times, 
just as Salviati in 1564 had claimed that preemi- 
nent position for Italian.^ 

It is not to be expected that so radical a break 
with the national traditions of France as was im- 
plied by Du Bellay's innovations would be left 
unheeded by the enemies of the Pleiade. The an- 
swer came soon, in an anonymous pamphlet, enti- 
tled Le Quintil Horatian sur la Defense et Illustration 
de la Langue frangoise. Until a very few years ago, 
this treatise was ascribed to a disciple of Marot, 
Charles Fontaine. But in 1883 an autograph letter 
of Fontaine's was discovered, in which he strenu- 
ously denies the authorship of the Quintil Horatian ; 
1 Cf. T. Tasso, xxiii. 97. 



182 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ERANCE [chap. 

and more recent researclies have shown pretty con- 
clusively that the real author was a friend of Fon- 
taine's, Barthelemy Aneau, head of the College of 
Lyons.^ The Quintil Horatian was first published 
in 1550, the year after the appearance of the D^- 
fense} The author informs us that he had trans- 
lated the whole of Horace's Ars Poetica into 
French verse "over twenty years ago, before Pelle- 
tier or any one else," that is, between 1525 and 
1530.^ This translation was never published, but 
fragments of it are cited in the Quintil Horatian. 
The pamphlet itself takes up the arguments of Du 
Bellay step by step, and refutes them. The author 
finds fault with the constructions, the metaphors, 
and the neologisms of Du Bellay. Aneau's tem- 
perament was dogmatic and pedagogic; his judg- 
ment was not always good ; and modern French 
critics cannot forgive him for attacking Du Bellay's 
use of such a word as patrie. 

But it is not entirely just to speak of the Quintil 
Horatian, in the words of a modern literary histo- 
rian, as full of futile and valueless criticisms. The 
author's minute linguistic objections are often hy- 
percritical, but his work represents a natural reaction 
against the Pleiade. His chief censure of the De- 
fense was directed against the introduction of clas- 
sical and Italian words into the French language. 
"Est-ce la defense et illustration," he exclaims, "ou 

1 H. Chamard, "Le Date et I'Auteur du Quintil Horatian," 
in the Revue d'Histoire litUraire de la France, 1898, v. 59 sq. 

2 Ibid. V. 54 sq. 

^ Ibid. V. 62; 63, n. 1. 



I.] DEVELOPMENT OF FRENCH CRITICISM 183 

plus tost offense et denigration?'' He charges 
the Pleiade with having contemned the classics of 
French poetry ; the new school advocated the dis- 
use of the complicated metrical forms merely be- 
cause they were too difficult. The sonnet, the ode, 
and the elegy he dismisses as useless innovations. 
The object of poetry, according to Horace, is to 
gladden and please, while the elegy merely saddens 
and brings tears to the eyes. "Poetry," he says, 
"is like painting; and as painting is intended to 
fill us with delight, and not to sadden us, so the 
mournful elegy is one of the meanest forms of 
poetry." Aneau is unable to appreciate the high 
and sublime conception of the poet's office which 
the Pleiade first introduced into French literature ; 
for him the poet is a mere versifier who amuses his 
audience. He represents the general reaction of 
the national spirit against the classical innovations 
of the Pleiade ; and the Quintil Horatian may there- 
fore be called the last representative work of the 
older school of poetry. 

It was at about this period that Aristotle's Poetics 
first influenced French criticism. In one of the 
concluding chapters of the Defense Du Bellay 
remarks that " the virtues and vices of a poem have 
been diligently treated by the ancients, such as 
Aristotle and Horace, and after them by Hierony- 
mus Vida."^ Horace is mentioned and cited in 
numerous other places, and the influence of the 
general rhetorical portions of the Ars Foetica is 
very marked throughout the Defense ; there are 
1 Defense, ii. 9. 



184 LITEKARY CRITICISM IN FRANCE [chap. 

also many traces of the influence of Vida. But 
there is no evidence whatsoever of any knowledge 
of Aristotle's Poetics. Of its name and importance 
Du Bellay had probably read in the writings of the 
Italians, but of its contents he knew little or noth- 
ing. There is indeed no well-established allusion 
to the Poetics in France before this time. None of 
the French humanists seems to have known it. Its 
title is cited by Erasmus in a letter dated February 
27, 1531, and it was published by him without any 
commentary at Basle in the same year, though 
Simon Grynaeus appears to have been the real edi- 
tor of this work. An edition of the Poetics was 
also published at Paris in 1541, but does not seem 
to have had any appreciable influence on the critical 
activity of France. Several years after the publi- 
cation of the Defense, in the satirical poem, Le Poete 
Courtisan, written shortly after his return from 
Italy in 1555, Du Bellay shows a somewhat more 
definite knowledge of the contents of the Poetics : — 

*' Je ne veux point ici du maistre d' Alexandre [i.e. Aristotle], 
Touchant I'art pontic, les preceptes t'apprendre 
Tu n'apprendras de moy comment jouer il faut 
Les miseres des rois dessus un eschaffaut : 
Je ne t'enseigne I'art de 1' humble comcedie 
Ni du M6onien la muse plus bardie : 
Bref je ne monstre ici d'un vers horacien 
Les vices et vertus du poeme ancien : 
Je ne depeins aussi le poete du Vide." ^ 

In 1555 Guillaume Morel, the disciple of Turne- 
bus, published an edition of Aristotle's Poetics at 
1 Du Bellay, p. 120. 



I. J DEVELOPMENT OF FRENCH CRITICISM 185 

Paris. It is interesting to note, however, that the 
reference in the Defense is the first allusion to the 
Poetics to be found in the critical literature of 
France ; by 1549 the Italian Eenaissance, and Ital- 
ian criticism, had come into France for good. In 
1560, the year before the publication of Scaliger's 
Poetics, Aristotle's treatise had acquired such prom- 
inence that in a volume of selections from Aristotle's 
works, published at Paris in that year, Aristotelis 
Sententice, the selections from the Poetics are placed 
at the head of the volume.^ In 1572 Jean de la 
Taille refers his readers to what " the great Aristotle 
in his Poetics, and after him Horace though not with 
the same subtlety, have said more amply and better 
than I." 2 

The influence of Scaliger's Poetics on the French 
dramatic criticism of this period has generally been 
overestimated. Scaliger's influence in France was 
not inconsiderable during the sixteenth century, 
but it was not until the very end of the century 
that he held the dictatorial position afterward ac- 
corded to him. No edition of his Poetics was ever 
published at Paris. The first edition appeared at 
Lyons, and subsequent editions appeared at Heidel- 
berg and Ley den. It was in Germany, in Spain, 
and in England that his influence was first felt; 
and it was largely through the Dutch scholars, 
Heinsius and Yossius, that his influence was car- 
ried into France in the next century. It is a mis- 
take to say that he had any primary influence on 

1 Parisiis, apnd Hieronymum de Marnaf , 1560. 

2 Robert, appendix iii. 



186 LITERAEY CRITICISM IN FRANCE [chap. 

the formulation and acceptance of the unities of 
time and place in French literature ; there is in his 
Poetics, as has been seen, no such definite and formal 
statement of the unities as may be found in Castel- 
vetro, in Jean de la Taille, in Sir Philip Sidney, or 
in Chapelain. At the same time, while Scaliger's 
Poetics did not assume during the sixteenth century 
the dictatorial supremacy it attained during the 
seventeenth, and while the particular views enunci- 
ated in its pages had no direct influence on the cur- 
rent of sixteenth-century ideas, it certainly had an 
indirect influence on the general tendency of the 
critical activity of the French Eenaissance. This 
indirect influence manifests itself in the gradual 
Latinization of culture during the second half of 
the sixteenth century, and, as will be seen later, in 
the emphasis on the Aristotelian canons in French 
dramatic criticism. Scaliger was a personal 
friend of several members of the Pleiade, and 
there is every reason to believe that he wielded 
considerable, even if merely indirect, influence 
on the development of that great literary move- 
ment. 

The last expression of the poetic theories of the 
Pleiade is to be found in the didactic poem of 
Vauquelin de la Fresnaye, VArt Poetique frangois, 
QIC Von pent remarquer la perfection et le defaut 
des anciennes et des modernes poesies. This poem, 
though not published until 1605, was begun in 
1574 at the command of Henry III., and, aug- 
mented by successive additions, was not yet com- 
plete by 1590. Vauquelin makes the following 



I.] DEVELOPMENT OF FRENCH CRITICISM 187 

explicit acknowledgment of his indebtedness to the 
critical writers that preceded him : — 

"Pour ce ensuivant les pas du fils de Nicomache [i.e. 

Aristotle], 
Du harpeur de Calabre [i.e. Horace], et tout ce que 

remache 
Vide et Minturne apres, j'ay cet ceuvre aprest6." i 

Aristotle, Horace, Vida, and jMinturno are thus 
his acknowledged models and sources. Nearly the 
whole of Horace's Ars Poetica he has translated 
and embodied in his poem; and he has borrowed 
from Vida a considerable number of images and 
metaphors.^ His indebtedness to Aristotle and to 
Minturno brings up several intricate questions. It 
has been said that Yauquelin simply mentioned 
Minturno in order to put himself under the pro- 
tection of a respectable Italian authority.^ On the 
contrary, exclusive of Horace, Eonsard, and Du 
Bellay, the whole of whose critical discussions he has 
almost incorporated into his poem, IMinturno is his 
chief authority, his model, and his guide. In fact, 
it was probably from IMinturno that he derived his 
entire knowledge of the Aristotelian canons; it is 
not Aristotle, but IMinturno's conception of Aristotle, 
that Vauquelin has adhered to. Many points in 
his poem are explained by this fact; here only 
one can be mentioned. Vauquelin's account, in the 
second canto of his Art Foetique, of the origin of 

1 Art Poet. i. 63. 

2 Pellissier, pp^ 57-63. 

3 Lemercier, Etude sur Vauquelin, 1887, p. 117, and Pellis- 
sier, p. 57. 



188 LITERARY CRITICISM IN FRANCE [chap. 

the drama from the songs at the altar of Bacchus 
at the time of the vintage, is undoubtedly derived 
from Minturno.^ It may have been observed that 
during the Kenaissance there were two distinct 
conceptions of the origin of poetry. One, which 
might be called ethical, was derived from Horace, 
according to whom the poet was originally a law- 
giver, or divine prophet; and this conception per- 
sists in modern literature from Poliziano to Shelley. 
The other, or scientific conception, was especially 
applied to the drama, and was based on Aristotle's 
remarks on the origin of tragedy; this attempt to 
discover some scientific explanation for poetic phe- 
nomena may be found in the more rationalistic of 
Renaissance critics, such as Scaliger and Viperano. 
Vauquelin de la Fresnaye, the disciple of Ronsard 
and the last exponent of the critical doctrines of 
the Pleiade, thus represents the incorporation of 
the body of Italian ideas into French criticism. 
With Vauquelin de la Fresnaye and De Laudun 
Daigaliers (1598) the history of French criticism 
during the sixteenth century is at an end. The 
critical activity of this period, as has already been 
remarked, is of a far more practical character than 
that of Italy. Literary criticism in France was 
created by the exigencies of a great literary move- 
ment ; and throughout the century it never lost its 
connection with this movement, or failed to serve 
it in some practical way. The poetic criticism was 
carried on by poets, whose desire it was to further 

1 Minturno, Arte Poetica, p. 73 ; De Poeta, p. 252. Cf. 
Vauquelin, Pellissier's introduction, p. xliv. 



I.] DEVELOPMENT OF FRENCH CRITICISM 189 

a cause, to defend their own works, or to justify 
their own views. The dramatic criticism was for 
the most part carried on by dramatists, sometimes 
even in the prefaces of their plays. In the six- 
teenth century, as ever since, the interrelation of 
the creative and the critical faculties in Prance 
was marked and definite. But there was, one 
might almost say, little critical theorizing in the 
French Eenaissance. Excepting, of course, Scaliger, 
there was even nothing of the deification of 
Aristotle found in Italian criticism. To take 
notice of a minute but significant detail, there 
was no attempt to explain Aristotle's doctrine of 
katharsis, the source of infinite controversy in Italy. 
There was no detailed and consistent discussion of 
the theory of the epic poem. All these things may 
be found in seventeenth-century France; but their 
home was sixteenth-century Italy. 



CHAPTER II 

THE THEORY OF POETRY IN THE FRENCH 

RENAISSANCE 

It is in keeping with the practical character of 
the literary criticism of this period that the mem- 
bers of the Pleiade did not concern themselves with 
the general theory of poetry. Until the very end 
of the century there is not to be found any system- 
atic poetic theory in France. It is in dramatic 
criticism that this period has most to offer, and 
the dramatic criticism is peculiarly interesting be- 
cause it foreshadows in many ways the doctrines 
upon which were based the dramas of Racine and 
Corneille. 

I. The Poetic Art 

In Du Bellay's Defense there is no attempt to 
formulate a consistent body of critical doctrine; 
but the book exhibits, in a more or less crude form, 
all the tendencies for which the Pleiade stands in 
French literature. The fundamental idea of the 
Defense is that French poetry can only hope to 
reach perfection by imitating the classics. The 
imitation of the classics implies, in the first place, 
erudition on the part of the poet ; and, moreover, 
190 



CHAP. II.] THE THEORY OF POETRY 191 

it requires intellectual labor and study. The poet 
is born, it is true ; but this only refers to the ardor 
and joyfulness of spirit which naturally excite him, 
but which, without learning and erudition, are ab- 
solutely useless. "He who wishes poetic immor- 
tality," says Du Bellay, '-must spend his time in 
the solitude of his own chamber; instead of eat- 
ing, drinking, and sleeping, he must endure hun- 
ger, thirst, and long vigils." ^ Elsewhere he speaks 
of silence and solitude as amy des Muses. Erom all 
this there arises a natural contempt for the igno- 
rant people, who know nothing of ancient learning : 
" Especially do I wish to admonish him who aspires 
to a more than vulgar glory, to separate himself 
from such inept admirers, to flee from the ignorant 
people, — the people who are the enemies of all 
rare and antique learning, — and to content himself 
with few readers, following the example of him who 
did not demand for an audience any one beside Plato 
himself." ^ 

In the Art Poetique of Jacques Pelletier du Mans, 
published at Lyons in 1555, the point of view is 
that of the Pleiade, but more mellow and moderate 
than that of its most advanced and radical mem- 
bers. The treatise begins with an account of the 
antiquity and excellence of poetry ; and poets are 
spoken of as originally the maitres et reformateurs 
de la vie. Poetry is then compared with oratory 
and with painting, after the usual Eenaissance 
fashion ; and Pelletier agrees with Horace in re- 
garding the combined power of art and nature as 
1 Defense, ii. 3. 2 jj^id. ii. H. 



192 LITERARY CRITICISM IN FRANCE [chap. 

necessary to tlie fashioning of a poet. His concep- 
tion of the latter's office is not unlike that of Tasso 
and Shelley, ^' It is the office of the poet to give 
novelty to old things, authority to the new, beauty 
to the rude, light to the obscure, faith to the doubt- 
ful, and to all things their true nature, and to their 
true nature all things." Concerning the questions 
of language, versification, and the feeling for natural 
scenery, he agrees fundamentally with the chief 
writers of the Pleiade. 

The greatest of these, Eonsard, has given ex- 
pression to his views on the poetic art in his Ab- 
reg4 de VArt Po4tique frayigois (1565), and later 
in the two prefaces of his epic of the Franciade. 
The chief interest of the Abrege in the present dis- 
cussion is that it expounds and emphasizes the high 
notion of the poet's office introduced into French 
poetry by the Pleiade. Before the advent of the 
new school, mere skill in the complicated forms of 
verse was regarded as the test of poetry. The 
poet was simply a rimeur; and the term "jpo^^e," 
with all that it implies, first came into use with 
the Pleiade. The distinction between the versifier 
and the poet, as pointed out by Aristotle and in- 
sisted upon by the Italians, became with the Ple- 
iade almost vital. Binet, the disciple and biographer 
of E-onsard, says of his master that '^he was the 
mortal enemy of versifiers, whose conceptions are 
all debased, and who think they have wrought a 
masterpiece when they have transposed something 
from prose into verse." ^ Ronsard's own account 
1 Ronsard, vii. 310, 325. 



II.] THE THEOKY OF POETRY 193 

of the dignity and high function of poetry must 
needs be cited at length : — 

"Above all things you will hold the Muses in reverence, 
yea, in singular veneration, and you will never let them 
serve in matters that are dishonest, or mere jests, or inju- 
dicious libels ; but you will hold them dear and sacred, as 
the daughters of Jupiter, that is, God, who by His holy 
grace has through them first made known to ignorant people 
the excellencies of His majesty. For poetry in early times 
was only an allegorical theology, in order to make stupid 
men, by pleasant and wondrously colored fables, know 
the secrets they could not comprehend, were the truth 
too openly made known to them. . . . Now, since the 
Muses do not care to lodge in a soul unless it is good, 
holy, and virtuous, you should try to be of a good dis- 
position, not wicked, scowling, and cross, but animated 
by a gentle spirit ; and you should not let anything enter 
your mind that is not superhuman and divine. You should 
have, in the first place, conceptions that are high, grand, 
beautiful, and not trailing upon the ground ; for the princi- 
pal part of poetry consists of invention, which comes as 
much from a beautiful nature as from the reading of good 
and ancient authors. If you undertake any great work, 
you will show yourself devout and fearing God, commenc- 
ing it either with His name or by any other which repre- 
sents some effects of His majesty, after the manner of the 
Greek poets ... for the Muses, Apollo, Mercury, Pallas, 
and other similar deities, merely represent the powers of 
God, to which the first men gave several names for the 
diverse effects of His incomprehensible majesty." ^ 

In this eloquent passage the conception of the 
poet as an essentially moral being, — a doctrine 
first enunciated by Strabo, and repeated by Min- 
turno and others, — and Boccaccio^s notion of 

1 Ronsard, vii. 37 sq. 
o 



194 LITERARY CRITICISM IN FRANCE [chap. 

poetry as originally an allegorical tlieology, are 
both introduced into French criticism. Elsewhere 
Konsard repeats the mediaeval concept that poets 

" d'un voile divers 
Par fables ont cach6 le vray sens de leurs vers." i 

It will be seen also that for Konsard, poetry is es- 
sentially a matter of inspiration ; and in the poem 
just quoted, the Discours a Jacques Orevin, he fol- 
lows the Platonic conception of divine inspiration 
or madness. A few years later Montaigne said of 
poetry that " it is an easier matter to frame it than 
to know it; being base and humble, it may be 
judged by the precepts and art of it, but the good 
and lofty, the supreme and divine, are beyond rules 
and above reason. It hath no community with our 
judgment, but ransacketh and ravisheth the same."^ 
In his various critical works Honsard shows 
considerable indebtedness to the Italian theorists, 
especially to Minturno. He does not attempt any 
formal definition of poetry, but its function is de- 
scribed as follows : " As the end of the orator is 
to persuade, so that of the poet is to imitate, invent, 
and represent the things that are, that can be, or 
that the ancients regarded as true." ^ The conclud- 
ing clause of this passage is intended to justify 
the modern use of the ancient mythology ; but the 
whole passage seems primarily to follow Scaliger * 

1 Ronsard, vi. 311 sq. 

2 Essais, 1. 36, Florio's translation. 

8 Ronsard, vii. 322. Cf. Aristotle, Poet. ix. 1-4 ; xxv. 6, 7. 
* Poet. iii. 24. 



II.] THE THEORY OF POETRY 195 

and Minturno.^ It is to be observed that verse is 
not mentioned in this definition as an essential 
requirement of poetry. It was indeed a favorite 
contention of his, and one for which he was in- 
debted to the Italians, that all who write in verse 
are not poets. Lucan and Silius Italicus have robed 
history with the raiment of verse; but according 
to Ronsard they would have done better in many 
ways to have written in prose. The poet, unlike 
the historian, deals with the verisimilar and the 
probable; and while he cannot be responsible for 
falsehoods which are in opposition to the truth of 
things, any more than the historian can, he is not 
interested to know whether or not the details of 
his poems are actual historical facts. Verisimili- /) 
tude, and not fact, is therefore the test of poetry. 

In Vauquelin de la Fresnaye may be found most 
of the Aristotelian distinctions in regard to imita- 
tion, harmony, rhythm, and poetic theory in general ; 
but these distinctions he derived, as has already 
been said, not directly from Aristotle, but in all prob- 
ability from Minturno. Poetry is defined as an art 
of imitation : — 

" C'est un art d'imiter, un art de contrefaire 
Que toute poesie, ainsi que de pourtraire." 2 

Verse is described as a heaven-sent instrument, 
the language of the gods ; and its value in poetry 
consists in clarifying and making the design com- 
pact.^ But it is not an essential of poetry ; Aris- 

1 De Poeta, pp. 44, 47. 2 j^rt Po4t. i. 187. 

8 lUd. i. 87 sq. 



196 LITERAKY CRITICISM IN FRANCE [chap. 

totle permits us to poetize in prose; and the 
romances of Heliodorus and Montemayor are ex- 
amples of this poetic prose. ^ The object of poetry 
is that it shall cause delight, and unless it succeeds 
in this it is entirely futile : — 

" C'est le but, c'est la fin des vers que resjouir : 
Les Muses autrement ne les veulent ouir." 

As it is the function of the orator to persuade and 
the physician to cure, and as they fail in their 
offices unless they effect these ends, so the poet fails 
unless he succeeds in pleasing.^ This comparison 
is a favorite one with the Italian critics. A similar 
passage has already been cited from Daniello ; and 
the same notion is thus expressed by Lodovico 
Dolce : " The aim of the physician is to cure dis- 
eases by means of medicine ; the orator's to per- 
suade by force of his arguments; and if neither 
attains this end, he is not called physician or orator. 
So if the poet does not delight, he is not a poet, for 
poetry delights all, even the ignorant.'^ ^ 

But delight, according to Vauquelin, is merely 
the means of directing us to higher things ; poetry 
is a delightful means of leading us to virtue : — 

" C'est pourquoy des beaus vers la joyeuse alegresse 
Nous conduit aux vertus d'une plaisante addresse." * 

Vauquelin, like Scaliger, Tasso, Sidney, compares 
the poet with God, the great Workman, who made 

1 Art Po4t. ii. 261. ^ Osservationi, Vinegia, 1560, p. 190. 

2 Ibid. i. 697 sq. ^ Art Po^t. i. 744. 



II.] THE THEOKY OE POETRY 197 

everytliing out of nothing.^ Tlie poet is a divinely 
inspired person, who, sans art, sans sgavoir, creates 
works of divine beauty. Vauquelin's contemporary, 
Bu Bartas, lias in his Uranie expressed this idea in 
the following manner : — 

*' Each art is learned by art ; but Poesie 
Is a mere heavenly gift, and none can taste 
The dews we drop from Pindus plenteously, 
If sacred fire have not his heart embraced. 

*' Hence is 't that many great Philosophers, 
Deep-learned clerks, in prose most eloquent, 
Labor in vain to make a graceful verse. 
Which many a novice frames most excellent." 2 

While this is the accepted Eenaissance doctrine of 
inspiration, Vauquelin, in common with all other 
followers of the Pleiade, was fully alive to the ne- 
cessity of artifice and study in poetry ; and he agrees 
with Horace in regarding both art and nature as 
equally necessary to the making of a good poet. It 
is usage that makes art, but art perfects and regu- 
lates usage : — 

" Et ce bel Art nous sert d'escalier pour monter 
ADieu."3 

II. Jlie Drama 

Dramatic criticism in France begins as a reaction 
against the drama of the Middle Ages. The 
mediaeval drama was formless and inorganic, with- 

1 Art Po4t. i. 19. Cf. Tasso, cited by Shelley, Defence, p. 42, 
" No one merits the name of creator except God and the poet." 

2 Sylvester's Du Bartas, 1641, p. 242. 

3 Art Po6t. 1. 149. 



198 LITERARY CRITICISM IN FRANCE [chap. 

out art or dignity. The classical drama, on the 
other hand, possessed both form and dignity; and 
the new school, perceiving this contrast, looked to 
the Aristotelian canons, as restated by the Italians, 
to furnish the dignity and art which the tragedy of 
Greece and Rome possessed, and which their own 
moralities and farces fundamentally lacked. In the 
first reference to dramatic literature in French criti- 
cism, the mediaeval and classical dramas are com- 
pared after this fashion; but as Sibilet (1548), in 
whose work this passage appears, wrote a year or so 
before the advent of the Pleiade, the comparison is 
not so unfavorable to the morality and the farce as 
it became in later critics. " The French morality," 
says Sibilet, "represents, in certain distinct traits, 
Greek and Latin tragedy, especially in that it 
treats of grave and momentous deeds {faits graves 
et principaus) ; and if the French had always made 
the ending of the morality sad and dolorous, the 
morality would be a tragedy. But in this, as in all 
things, we have followed our natural taste or in- 
clination, which is to take from foreign things not 
all we see, but only what we think will be useful 
to us and of national advantage ; for in the morality 
we treat, as the Greeks and Eomans do in their 
tragedies, the narration of deeds that are illustri- 
ous, magnanimous, and virtuous, or true, or at least 
verisimilar ; but we do otherwise in what is useful 
to the information of our manners and life, without 
subjecting ourselves to any sorrow or pleasure of 
the issue." ^ It would seem that Sibilet regards 
1 Sibilet, Art Po6t. ii. 8. 



II.] THE THEORY OF POETRY 199 

tlie morality as lacking nothing but the unhappy 
ending of classical tragedy. At the same time this 
passage exhibits perhaps the first trace of Aris- 
totelianism in French critical literature ; for Sibilet 
specifies several characteristic features of Greek 
and Latin tragedy, which he could have found only 
in Aristotle or in tlie Italians. In the first place, 
tragedy deals only with actions that are grave, 
illustrious, and for the most part magnanimous 
or virtuous. In the second place, the actions of 
tragedy are either really true, that is, historical, or 
if not true, have all the appearance of truth, that 
is, they are verisimilar. Thirdly, the end of 
tragedy is always sad and dolorous. Fourthly, 
tragedy performs a useful function, which is con- 
nected in some way with the reformation of man- 
ners and life; and, lastly, the effect of tragedy is 
connected with the sorrow or pleasure brought 
about by the catastrophe. These distinctions antici- 
pate many of those found later in Scaliger and in 
the French critics. 

In Du Bellay (1549) we find no traces of dra- 
matic theory beyond the injunction, already noted, 
that the French should substitute classical tragedy 
and comedy for the old morality and farce. A few 
years later, however, in Pelletier (1555), there ap- 
pears an almost complete system of dramatic 
criticism. He urges the French to attempt the 
composition of tragedy and comedy. " This species 
of poetry," he says, " will bring honor to the French 
language, if it is attempted," — a remark which 
illustrates the innate predisposition of the French 



200 LITERARY CRITICISM IN FRANCE [chap. 

for dramatic poetry.^ He then proceeds to dis- 
tinguish tragedy from comedy much in the same 
manner as Scaliger does six years later. It is to 
be remembered that Pelletier's Art Poetique was 
published at Lyons in 1555, while Scaliger's Poetics 
was published at the same place in 1561. Pelletier 
may have known Scaliger personally ; but it is 
more probable that Pelletier derived his informa- 
tion from the same classical and traditional sources 
as did Scaliger. At all events, Pelletier distin- 
guishes tragedy from comedy in regard to style, 
subject, characters, and ending in exact Scaligerian 
fashion. Comedy has nothing in common with 
tragedy except the fact that neither can have more 
or less than five acts. The style and diction of 
comedy are popular and colloquial, while those of 
tragedy are most dignified and sublime. The comic 
characters are men of low condition, while those of 
tragedy are kings, princes, and great lords. The 
conclusion of comedy is always joyous, that of 
tragedy is always sorrowful and heart-rending. 
The themes of tragedy are deaths, exiles, and 
unhappy changes of fortune ; those of comedy are 
the loves and passions of young men and young 
women, the indulgence of mothers, the wiles of 
slaves, and the diligence of nurses.^ 

By this time, then, Aristotle's theory of tragedy, 
as restated by the Italians, had become part of 
French criticism. The actual practice of the French 
drama had been modified by the introduction of 
these rules ; and they had played so important a 
1 Pelletier, Art Po^t. ii. 7. 2 j^id. 



II.] THE THEOKY OF POETRY 201 

part that Grevin, in Ms Bref Discours pour V Intelli- 
gence de ce TJiedtre, prefixed to his Mort de Cesar 
(1562), could say that French tragedy had already 
attained perfection, even when regarded from the 
standpoint of the Aristotelian canons. " Our trage- 
dies," says Grevin, "have been so well polished 
that there is nothing left now to be desired, — I 
speak of those which are composed according to 
the rules of Aristotle and Horace." Grevin's Dis- 
cours was published the year after Scaliger's Poetics, 
but shows no indication of Scaligerian influence. 
His definition of tragedy is based on a most vague 
and incomplete recollection of Aristotle, " Tragedy, 
as Aristotle says in his Poetics, is an imitation or 
representation of some action that is illustrious and 
great in itself, such as the death of Caesar." He 
shows his independence or his ignorance of Scaliger 
by insisting on the inferiority of Seneca, whom 
Scaliger had rated above all the Greeks; and he 
shows his independence of the ancients by substi- 
tuting a crowd of Csesar's soldiers for the singers 
of the older chorus, on the ground that there ought 
not to be singing in the representation of tragedy 
any more than there is in actual life itself, for 
tragedy is a representation of truth or of what has 
the appearance of truth. There are in Grevin's 
Discours several indications that the national feel- 
ing had not been entirely destroyed by the imita- 
tion of the classics ; but a discussion of this must 
be left for a later chapter. 

In Jean de la Taille's Art de Tragedie, prefixed 
to his Saiil le Furieux (1572), a drama in which a 



202 LITERARY CRITICISM IN FRANCE [chap. 

biblical theme is fashioned after the manner of 
classical tragedy, there is to be found the most ex- 
plicit and distinct antagonism to the old, irregular 
moralities, which are not modelled according to the 
true art and the pattern of the ancients. They are 
but amoves epiceries — words that recall Du Bellay. 
But curiously enough, Jean de la Taille differs 
entirely from Grevin, and asserts positively that 
France had as yet no real tragedies, except pos- 
sibly a few translated from the classics. Waging 
war, as he is, against the crude formlessness of the 
national drama, perfect construction assumes for 
him a very high importance. "The principal 
point in tragedy," he says, "is to know how to 
dispose and fashion it well, so that the plot is well 
intertwined, mingled, interrupted, and resumed, 
. . . and that there is nothing useless, without 
purpose, or out of place.'' For Jean de la Taille, 
as for most Eenaissance writers, tragedy is the 
least popular and the most elegant and elevated 
form of poetry, exclusive of the epic. It deals 
with the pitiful ruin of great lords, with the in- 
constancy of fortune, with banishment, war, pesti- 
lence, famine, captivity, and the execrable cruelty 
of tyrants.^ The end of tragedy is in fact to move 
and to sting the feelings and the emotions of men. 
The characters of tragedy — and this is the Aris- 
totelian conception — should be neither extremely 
bad, such men as by their crimes merit punishment, 
nor perfectly good and holy, like Socrates, who was 
wrongfully put to death. Invented or allegorical 
1 Robert, app. iii. 



II.] THE THEOEY OF POETKY 203 

characters, such, as Death, Avarice, or Truth, are 
not to "be employed. At the same time, Jean de 
la Taille, like Grevin, is not averse to the use of 
scriptural subjects in tragedy, although he cautions 
the poet against long-winded theological discussions. 
The Senecan drama was his model in treating of 
tragedy, as it was indeed that of the Renaissance 
in general ; and tragedy approached more and more 
closely to the oratorical and sententious manner of 
the Latin poet. Ronsard, for example, asserts that 
tragedy and comedy are entirely didascaliques et en- 
seignantes, and should be enriched by numerous ex- 
cellent and rare sentences (sententice), " for in a few 
words the drama must teach much, being the mir- 
ror of human life." ^ Similarly, Du Bellay advises 
poets to embellish their poetry with grave sen- 
tences, and Pelletier praises Seneca principally be- 
cause he is sentencieux. 

Vauquelin, in his Art Poetique, gives a metrical 
paraphrase of Aristotle's definition of tragedy : — 

*' Mais le sujet tragic est un fait imit^ 
De chose juste et grave, en ses vers limits ; 
Auquel on y doit voir de I'affreux, du terrible, 
Un fait non attendu, qui tienne de 1' horrible, 
Du pitoyable aussi, le coeur attendrissant 
D'un tigre furieux, d'un lion rugissant." 2 

The subject of tragedy should be old, and should 
be connected with the fall of great tyrants and 
princes ; ^ and in regard to the number of acts, the 
number of interlocutors on the stage, the deus ex 

1 Ronsard, iii. 18 sq. 2 j^rt Poet. ill. 153. 

3 Ibid. 11. 1113, 441. 



204 LITERARY CRITICISM IN FRANCE [chap. 

machinay and the cliorus/ Vauquelin merely para- 
phrases Horace. Comedy is defined as the imi- 
tation of an action which by common usage is 
accounted wicked, but which is not so wicked that 
there is no remedy for it; thus, for example, a 
man who has seduced a young girl may recompense 
her by taking her in marriage.^ Hence while the 
actions of tragedy are "virtuous, magnificent, and 
grand, royal, and sumptuous," the incidents of 
comedy are actually and ethically of a lower grade.^ 
For tragi-comedy Vauquelin has nothing but con- 
tempt. It is, in fact, a bastard form, since the 
tragedy with a happy ending serves a similar but 
more dignified purpose. Vauquelin, like Boileau 
and most other French critics after him, follows 
Aristotle at length in the description of dramatic 
recognitions and reversals of fortune.* Most of the 
other Aristotelian distinctions are also to be found 
in his work. 

In the Art Pokique frangois of Pierre de Laudun, 
Sieur d'Aigaliers, published in 1598, these distinc- 
tions reappear in a more or less mutilated form. 
In the fifth and last book of this treatise, De Laudun 
follows the Italian scholars, especially Scaliger and 
Viperano. He does not differ essentially from 
Scaliger in the definition of tragedy, in the division 
into acts and the place of the chorus, in the discus- 
sion of the characters and subjects of tragedy, and 
in the distinction between tragedy and comedy .'^ 

1 Art Po^t. ii. 459. s j^i^^ m igi. 

2 Ibid. iii. 143. ^ ibia. iii. 189 sq. 

5 Robert, app. iv. 



II.] THE THEORY OF POETRY 205 

His conception of tragedy is in keeping with, the 
usual Senecan ideal ; it should be adorned by fre- 
quent sentences, allegories, similitudes, and other 
ornaments of poetry. The more cruel and sangui- 
nary the tragic action is, the more excellent it will 
be ; but at the same time, much that makes the ac- 
tion cruel is to be enacted only behind the stage. 
Like Pelletier, he objects to the introduction of all 
allegorical and invented characters, or even gods 
and goddesses, on the ground that these are not 
actual beings, and hence are out of keeping with 
the theme of tragedy, which must be real and his- 
torical. De Laudun has also something to say con- 
cerning the introduction of ghosts in the tragic 
action ; and his discussion is peculiarly interesting 
when we remember that it was almost at this very 
time, in England, that the ghost played so impor- 
tant a part in the Shakespearian drama. " If the 
ghosts appear before the action begins," says De 
Laudun, ^Hhey are permissible; but if they appear 
during the course of the action, and speak to the 
actors themselves, they are entirely faulty and rep- 
rehensible." De Laudun borrowed from Scaliger 
the scheme of the ideal tragedy : " The first act 
contains the complaints; the second, the suspicions; 
the third, the counsels ; the fourth, the menaces 
and preparations ; the fifth, the fulfilment and effu- 
sion of blood." ^ But despite his subservience to 
Scaliger, he is not afraid to express his indepen- 
dence of the ancients. We are not, he says, en- 
tirely bound to their laws, especially in the number 
1 Art Po€t. v. 6. 



206 LITERARY CRITICISM IN FRANCE [chap. 

of actors on the stage, whicli according to classic 
usage never exceeded three ; for nowadays, notwith- 
standing the counsels of Aristotle and Horace, an 
audience has not the patience to be satisfied with 
only two or three persons at one time. 

The history of the dramatic unities in France 
during the sixteenth century demands some atten- 
tion. That they had considerable effect on the 
actual practice of dramatic composition from the 
very advent of the Pleiade is quite obvious ; for in 
the first scene of the first French tragedy, the 
Cleopdtre of Jodelle (1552), there is an allusion to 
the unity of time, which Corneille was afterward 
to call the r^gle des regies : — 

" Avant que ce soleil, qui vient ores de naitre, 
Ayant trac^ son jour chez sa tante se plonge, 
C16opatre mourra ! " 

In 1553 Mellin de Saint-Gelais translated Trissino's 
Sofonisba into French, and the influence of the Italian 
drama became fixed in France. But the first distinct 
formulation of the unities is to be found in Jean de la 
Taille's Art de Tragedie (1572). His statement of 
the unities is explicit, "II faut tou jours representer 
I'histoire ou le jeu en un meme jour, en un mgme 
temps, et en un meme lieu."^ Jean de la Taille 
was indebted for this to Castelvetro, who two years 
before had stated it thus, "La mutatione trag- 
ica non puo tirar con esso seco se non una giornata 
e un luogo." ^ The unity of time was adopted by 
Eonsard about this same time in the following 
words : — 

1 Robert, app. iii. 2 Poetica, p. 534. 



II.] THE THEORY OF POETRY 207 

" Tragedy and comedy are circumscribed and limited to a 
short space of time, that is, to one whole day. The most 
excellent masters of this craft commence their works from 
one midnight to another, and not from sunrise to sunset, in 
order to have greater compass and length of time. On the 
other hand, the heroic poem, which is entirely of a martial 
character {tout guerner), comprehends only the actions of 
one whole year." i 

This passage is without doubt borrowed from 
Minturno (1564) : — 

" Whoever regards well the works of the most admired 
ancient authors will find that the materials of scenic poetry 
terminate in one day, or do not pass beyond the space of two 
days ; just as the action of the epic poem, however great and 
however long it may be, does not occupy more than one 
year." 2 

Minturno, it will be remembered, was the first to 
limit the action of the heroic poem to one year. In 
another passage he deduces the rule from the prac- 
tice of Virgil and Homer ; ^ but Ronsard seems to 
think that Virgil himself has not obeyed this law. 
We have already alluded to the influence of Minturno 
on the Pleiade. Vauquelin de la Fresnaye, who ex- 
plicitly acknowledges his indebtedness to Minturno, 
also follows him in limiting the action of the drama 
to one day and that of the epic to one year : — 

" Or comme eux 1' heroic suivant le droit sentier, 
Doit son oeuvre comprendre au cours d'un an entier ; 
Le tragic, le comic, dedans une journee 
Comprend ce que fait 1' autre au cours de son annee i 
Le theatre jamais ne doit estre rempli 
D'un argument plus long que d'un jour accompli." * 

1 Ronsard, ill. 19. 3 lud. p. 12 ; De Poeta, p. 149. 

2 Arte Poetica, p. 71. * Art Poet. 11. 253. 



208 LITERARY CRITICISM IN I^RANCE [chap. 

The two last lines of this passage bear considerable 
resemblance to Boileau's famous statement of the 
unities three-quarters of a century later.^ 

Toward the end of the sixteenth century, then, 
the unity of time, and in a less degree the unity 
of place, had become almost inviolable laws of the 
drama. But at this very period strong notes of 
revolt against the tyranny of the unities begin to 
be heard. Up to this time the classical Italian 
drama had been the pattern for French playwrights ; 
but the irregular Spanish drama was now com- 
mencing to exert considerable influence in France, 
and with this Spanish influence came the Spanish 
opposition to the unities. In 1582 Jean de Beau- 
breuil, in the preface of his tragedy of Begulus, had 
spoken with contempt of the rule of twenty-four 
hours as trop superstitieux. But De Laudun was 
probably the first European critic to argue formally 
against it. The concluding chapter of his Art 
Poetique (1598) gives five different reasons why the 
unity of time should not be observed in the drama. 
The chapter is entitled, " Concerning those who say 
that the action of tragedy must conclude in a single 
day ; " and De Laudun begins by asserting that this 
opinion had never been sustained by any good 
author. This is fairly conclusive evidence that De 
Laudun had never directly consulted Aristotle's 
Poetics, but was indebted for his knowledge of 
Aristotle to the Italians, and especially to Scaliger. 
The five arguments which he formulates against the 
unity of time are as follows : — 

1 Boileau, Art Poet. iii. 45, 



II.] THE THEORY OF POETRY 209 

*'In the first place, this law, if it is observed by any 
of the ancients, need not force us to restrict our tragedies in 
any way, since we are not bound by their manner of writing 
or by the measure of feet and syllables with which they com- 
pose their verses. In the second place, if we were forced to 
observe this rigorous law, we should fall into one of the 
greatest of absurdities, by being obliged to introduce impos- 
sible and incredible things in order to enhance the beauty of 
our tragedies, or else they would lack all grace ; for besides 
being deprived of matter, we could not embellish our poems 
with long discourses and various interesting events. In the 
third place, the action of the Troades, an excellent tragedy 
by Seneca, could not have occurred in one day, nor could 
even some of the plays of Euripides or Sophocles. In the 
fourth place, according to the definition already given [on 
the authority of Aristotle], tragedy is the recital of the lives 
of heroes, the fortune and grandeur of kings, princes, and 
others ; and all this could not be accomplished in one day. 
Besides, a tragedy must contain five acts, of which the first 
is joyous, and the succeeding ones exhibit a gradual change, 
as I have already indicated above; and this change a single 
day would not suffice to bring about. In the fifth and last 
place, the tragedies in which this rule is observed are not any 
better than the tragedies in which it is not observed ; and 
the tragic poets, Greek and Latin, or even French, do not 
and need not and cannot observe it, since very often in a 
tragedy the whole life of a prince, king, emperor, noble, or 
other person is represented ; — besides a thousand other 
reasons which I could advance if time permitted, but which 
must be left for a second edition." i 

The history of the unity of time during the next 
century does not strictly concern us here; but it 
may be well to point out that it was through the 
offices of Chapelain, seconded by the authority of 
Cardinal Eichelieu, that it became fixed in the 
1 Arnaud, app. ill. 



210 LITERARY CRITICISM IN FRANCE [chap. 

dramatic theory of France. In a long letter, dating 
from November, 1630, and recently published for 
the first time, Chapelain sets out to answer all the 
objections made against the rule of twenty-four 
hours. It is sustained, he says, by the practice of 
the ancients and the universal consensus of the 
Italians ; but his own proof is based on reason 
alone. It is the old argument of vraisemblance, as 
found in Maggi, Scaliger, and especially Castelvetro, 
whom Chapelain seems in part to follow. By 1635 
he had formulated the whole theory of the three 
unities and converted Cardinal Eichelieu to his 
views. In the previous year Mairet's Soplionisbe, the 
first " regular " French tragedy, had been produced. 
In 1636 the famous Cid controversy had begun. 
By 1640 the battle was gained, and the unities be- 
came a part of the classic theory of the drama 
throughout Europe. A few years later their prac- 
tical application was most thoroughly indicated by 
the Abbe d'Aubignac, in his Pratique du TMdtre; 
and they were definitely formulated for all time by 
Boileau in the celebrated couplet : — 

" Qu'en un lieu, qu'en un jour, un seul fait accompli 
Tienne jusqu'^ la fin le theatre rempli.''^ 

III. Heroic Poetry 

It was the supreme ambition of the Pleiade to 

produce a great French epic. In the very first 

manifesto of the new school, Du Bellay urges every 

French poet to attempt another Iliad or ^neid for 

1 Art Po€t. ill. 45. 



II.] THE THEORY OF POETRY 211 

the honor and glory of France. For Pelletier 
(1555) the heroic poem is the one that really gives 
the true title of poet ; it may be compared to the 
ocean, and all other forms to rivers.^ He seems to 
be following Giraldi Cintio's discourse on the romanzi, 
published the year before his own work, when he 
says that the French poet should write a Heradeid, 
the deeds of Hercules furnishing the mightiest and 
most heroic material he can think of .^ At the same 
time Virgil is for him the model of an epic poet ; 
and his parallel between Homer and Virgil bears 
striking resemblance to the similar parallel in Cap- 
riano's Delia Vera Poetica, published in the very 
same year as his own treatise.^ Like Capriano, 
Pelletier censures the superfluous exuberance, the 
loquaciousness, the occasional indecorum, and the 
inferiority in eloquence and dignity of Homer when 
compared with the Latin poet. 

It was Ronsard's personal ambition to be the 
French Virgil, as in lyric poetry he had been pro- 
claimed the French Pindar. For twenty years he 
labored on the Franciade, but never finished it. 
In the two prefaces which he wrote for it, the first 
in 1572, and the second (published posthumously) 
about 1584, he attempts to give expression to his 
ideal of the heroic poet. In neither of them does 
he succeed in formulating any very definite or con- 
sistent body of epic theory. They are chiefly inter- 
esting in that they indicate the general tendencies of 
the Pleiade, and show Ronsard's own rhetorical prin- 

1 Art Po4t. ii. 8. 2 jud. i. 3. 

3 Ihid. i. 5. Cf. Capriano, cap. v. 



212 LITERARY CRITICISM IN PRANCE [chap. 

ciplesj and his feeling for nature and natural beauty. 
The passage has already been cited in which he 
speaks of the heroic poem as entirely of a martial 
character, and limits its action to the space of one 
year. It has also been seen that for him, as for the 
Italians, verisimilitude, and not fact, is the test of 
poetry. At the same time, the epic poet is to avoid 
anachronisms and misstatements of fact. Such 
faults do not disturb the reader so much when the 
story is remote in point of time ; and the poet 
should therefore always use an argument, the events 
of which are at least three or four hundred years 
old. The basis of the work should rest upon some 
old story of past times and of long-established re- 
nown, which has gained the credit of men.^ This 
notion of the antiquity of the epic fable had been 
accepted long ago by the Italians. It is stated, for 
example, in Tasso's Discorsi delV Arte Poetica, 
written about 1564, though not published until 
1587, fifteen years after Tasso had visited Eonsard 
in Paris. 

Vauquelin de la Fresnaye has the Pleiade venera- 
tion for heroic poetry; but he cannot be said to 
exhibit any more definite conception of its form 
and function. For him the epic is a vast and 
magnificent narration, a world in itself, wherein 
men, things, and thoughts are wondrously mir- 
rored : — 

** C'est un tableau du monde, un miroir qui raporte 
Les gestes des mortels en differente sorte. . . . 

« 1 Ronsard, iii. 23, 29. 



II.] THE THEORY OF POETRY 213 

Car toute poesie il contient en soym^me, 

Soit tragique ou comique, ou soit autre poeme." i 

With this we may compare what Muzio had said in 
1551: — 

" II poem a sovrano h una pittura 
De 1' universe, e pero in sh comprende 
Ogni stilo, ogni forma, ogni ritratto." 

But despite this very vague conception of the epic 
in the French Eenaissance, there was, as has been 
saidj a high veneration for it as a form, and for its 
masters, Homer and especially Virgil. This ac- 
counts for the large number of attempts at epic 
composition in France during the next century. 
But beyond the earlier and indefinite notion of 
heroic poetry the French did not get for a long 
time to come. Even for Boileau the epic poem was 
merely the vaste recit d^une longue action} 

1 Vauquelin, Art Po^t. 1. 471, 503. 

2 Boileau, Art Poet. iii. 161. 



CHAPTER III 

CLASSIC AND ROMANTIC ELEMENTS IN FRENCH 
CRITICISM DURING THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 

The principle for which, the Pleiade stood was, 
like that of humanism, the imitation of the classics ; 
and the Pleiade was the first to introduce this as 
a literary principle into France. This means, as 
regards French literature, in the first place, the 
substitution of the classical instead of its own 
national tradition ; and, secondly, the substitution 
of the imitation of the classics for the imitation of 
nature itself. In making these vital substitutions, 
Du Bellay and his school have been accused of 
creating once and for all the gulf that separates 
French poetry from the national life.^ This accusa- 
tion is perhaps unfair to the Pleiade, which insisted 
on the poet's going directly to nature, which empha- 
sized most strongly the sentiment for natural scen- 
ery and beauty, and which first declared the 
importance of the artisan and the peasant as sub- 
jects for poetry. But there can be but little doubt 
that the separation of poetry from the national life 
was the logical outcome of the doctrines of the 
Pleiade. In disregarding the older French poets 
and the evolution of indigenous poetry, in formu- 

1 Brunetiere, i. 45. 
214 



CHAP. III.] ELEMENTS IN ERENCH CRITICISM 215 

lating an ideal of the poet as an unsociable and 
ascetic character, it separated itself from the nat- 
ural tendencies of French life and letters, and 
helped to effect the final separation between poetry 
and the national development. 

I. Classical Elements 

It was to Du Bellay (1549) that France owes the 
introduction of classical ideas into French litera- 
ture. He was the first to regard the imitation of 
the classics as a literary principle, and to advise the 
poet, after the manner of Vida, to purloin all 
the treasures of Greek and Latin literature for the 
benefit of French poetry. Moreover, he first formu- 
lated the aristocratic conception of the poet held 
by the Pleiade. The poet was advised to flee from 
the ignorant people, to bury himself in the soli- 
tude of his own chamber, to dream and to ponder, 
and to content himself with few readers. " Beyond 
everything," says Du Bellay, " the poet should have 
one or more learned friends to whom he can show 
all his verses ; he should converse not only with 
learned men, but with all sorts of workmen, 
mechanics, artists, and others, in order to learn 
the technical terms of their arts, for use in beau- 
tiful descriptions." ^ This was a favorite theory of 
the Pleiade, which like some of our own contem- 
porary writers regarded the technical arts as impor- 
tant subjects of inspiration. But the essential 
point at the bottom of all these discussions is a high 
1 D^enscy ii. 11. 



216 LITERARY CRITICISM IN FRANCE [chap. 

contempt for the opinion of the vulgar in matters 
of art. 

The Quintil Horatian (1550) represents, as has 
already been seen, a natural reaction against the 
foreign and classical innovations of the Pleiade. 
Du Bellay's advice, ^^ Prens garde que ce poeme soit 
eslogne du vulgaire," — advice insisted upon by 
many of the rhetoricians of the Italian Renais- 
sance, — receives considerable censure ; on the con- 
trary, says the author of the Quintil, the poet must 
be understood and appreciated by all, unlearned as 
well as learned, just as Marot was. The Quintil 
was, in fact, the first work to insist on definite- 
ness and clearness in poetry, as these were after- 
ward insisted on by Malherbe and Boileau. Like 
Malherbe, and his disciple Deimier, the author 
of the Acad^mie de VArt Poetique (1610), in which 
the influence of the Quintil is fully acknowledged, 
the author of the Quintil objects to all forms of 
poetic license, to all useless metaphors that obscure 
the sense, to all Latinisms and foreign terms and 
locutions.^ Du Bellay had dwelt on the importance 
of a knowledge of the classical and Italian tongues, 
and had strongly advised the French poet to nat- 
uralize as many Latin, Greek, and even Spanish 
and Italian terms as he could. The Quintil is par- 
ticularly bitter against all such foreign innovations. 
The poet need not know foreign tongues at all ; 
without this knowledge he can be as good a poet as 
any of the groecaniseurs, latiniseurs, et italianiseurs 
en frangoys. This protest availed little, and Du 
1 Cf. Rucktaschel, p. 10 sq. 



III.] ELEMENTS IN FEENCH CRITICISM 217 

Bellay's advice in regard to the use of Italian terms 
was so well followed that several years later, in 1578, 
Henri Estienne vigorously protested against the 
practice in his Dialogues du Nouveau Langage 
frangois italianise. As Eonsard and Du Bellay 
represent the foreign elements that went to make 
up classicism in France, so the author of the Quintil 
Horatian may be said to represent in his humble 
way certain enduring elements of the esprit gaulois. 
He represents the national traditions, and he pre- 
pares the way for the two great bourgeois poets of 
France, — Boileau, with his " Tout doit tendre au 
bon sens," and Moliere, with his bluff cry, " Je 
suis pour le bon sens.'^ 

According to Pelletier (1555), French poetry is 
too much like colloquial speech ; in order to equal 
classical literature, the poets of France must be 
more daring and less popular.^ Pelletier's point of 
view is here that of the Pleiade, which aimed at 
a distinct poetic language, diverse from ordinary 
prose speech. But he is thoroughly French, and 
in complete accord with the author of the Quintil 
Horatian, in his insistence on perfect clearness in 
poetry. "Clearness," he says, "is the first and 
worthiest virtue of a poem."^ Obscurity is the 
chief fault of poetry, "for there is no difference 
between not speaking at all and not being under- 
stood."^ For these reasons he is against all un- 
necessary and bombastic ornament ; the true use of 
metaphors and comparisons of all sorts is " to ex- 
plain and represent things as they really are." 
1 Art Poet. i. 3. 2 md. i. 9. 3 jjjia. i. 10. 



218 LITERARY CRITICISM IN FRANCE [chap. 

Similarly, Ronsard, while recognizing tlie value of 
comparisons, rightfully used, as the very nerves 
and tendons of poetry, declares that if instead of 
perfecting and clarifying, they obscure or con- 
fuse the idea, they are ridiculous.^ Obscurity was 
the chief danger, and indeed the chief fault, of the 
Pleiade; and it is no small merit that both E-on- 
sard and Pelletier perceived this fact. 

The Pleiade exhibits the classic temper in its 
insistence on study and art as essential to poetry ; 
but it was not in keeping with the doctrines of 
later French classicists in so far as it regarded the 
poetic labors as of an unsociable and even ascetic 
character. In this, as has been seen, Konsard is a 
true exponent of the doctrines of the new school. 
But on the whole the classic spirit was strong in 
him. He declares that the poet's ideas should be 
high and noble, but not fantastic. " They should 
be well ordered and disposed ; and while they seem 
to transcend those of the vulgar, they should always 
appear to be easily conceived and understood by 
any one." ^ Here Du Bellay's aristocratic concep- 
tion of poetry is modified so as to become a very 
typical statement of the principle underlying French 
classicism. Again, Ronsard points out, as Vida and 
other Italian critics had done before, that the great 
classical poets seldom speak of things by their bare 
and naked names. Virgil does not, for example, 
say, " It was night," or " It was day," but he uses 
some such circumlocution as this : — 

"Postero Phoebea lustrabat lampade terras." 
1 Ronsard, iii. 26 sq. 2 j^ia. yii. 323. 



III.] ELEMENTS IN FRENCH CRITICISM 219 

The unfortunate results of the excessive use of such 
circumlocutions are well exemplified in the later 
classicists of Erance. Eonsard perhaps foresaw 
this danger, and wisely says that circumlocution, 
if not used judiciously, makes the style inflated 
and bombastic. In the first preface to the Fraud- 
ade, he expresses a decided preference for the 
naive facility of Homer over the artful diligence of 
Virgil.^ In the second preface, however, written a 
dozen years later, and published posthumously as 
revised by his disciple Binet, there is interesting 
evidence, in the preeminence given to Virgil, of the 
rapidity with which the Latinization of culture was 
being effected at this period. <^Our French au- 
thors," says Eonsard, " know Virgil far better than 
they know Homer or any other Greek writer." 
And again, "Virgil is the most excellent and the 
most rounded, the most compact and the most per- 
fect of all poets." ^ Of the naive facility of Homer 
we hear absolutely nothing. 

We are now beginning to enter the era of rules. 
Eonsard did not undervalue the " rules and secrets " 
of poetry ; and Vauquelin de la Fresnaye calls his 
own critical poem cet Art de Mgles recherchees} In 
regard to the imitation of the classics, Vauquelin 
agrees heart and soul with the Pleiade that the 
ancients 

" nous ont desja trac6 
Un sentier qui de nous ne doit estre laiss6." * 

Nothing, indeed, could be more classical than his 

1 Ronsard, iii. 9 sq. s Art Po4t. ill. 1151. 

2 Ihid. iii. 23, 26. •* Ibid. i. 61. 



220 LITERAKY CRITICISM IN FRANCE [chap. 

comparison of poetry to a garden symmetrically 
laid out and trimmed.^ Moreover, like the classi- 
cists of the next century, lie affirms, as does E-on- 
sard also, that art must fundamentally imitate and 
resemble nature.^ 

The imitation of the classics had also a decided 
effect on the technique of French verse and on the 
linguistic principles of the Pleiade. Enjambement 
(the carrying over into another line of words re- 
quired to complete the sense) and hiatus (the clash 
of vowels in a line) were both employed in Latin 
and G-reek verse, and were therefore permitted in 
French poetry by the new school. Konsard, how- 
ever, anticipated the reforms of Malherbe and the 
practice of French classic verse, in forbidding both 
hiatus and enjambement, though in a later work of 
his this opinion is reversed. He was also probably 
the first to insist on the regular alternation of mas- 
culine and feminine rhymes in verse. This had 
never been strictly adhered to in practice, or re- 
quired by stringent rule, before Eonsard, but has 
become the invariable usage of French poetry ever 
since. Eonsard regards this device as a means of 
making verse keep tune more harmoniously with 
the music of instruments. It was one of the 
favorite theories of the Pleiade that poetry is in- 
tended, not to be read, but to be recited or sung, and 
that the words and the notes should be coupled 
lovingly together. Poetry without an accompani- 
ment of vocal or instrumental music exhibits but a 
small part of its harmony or perfection ; and while 

1 Art Po6t. i. 22 sq. 2 jud. i. 813. Cf. Ronsard, ii. 12. 



III.] ELEMENTS IN EKENCH CKITICISM 221 

composing verses, the poet should always pronounce 
them aloud, or rather sing them, in order to test 
their melody.^ This conception of music " married 
to immortal verse " doubtless came from Italy, and 
is connected with the rise of operatic music. De 
Laudun (1598) differs from the members of the 
Pleiade in forbidding the use of words newly 
coined or taken from the dialects of France, and 
in objecting to the use of enjambement and hiatus. 
It is evident, therefore, that while the influence of 
the Pleiade is visible throughout De Laudun's trea- 
tise, his disagreement with Eonsard and Du Bellay 
on a considerable number of essential points shows 
that by the end of the century the supremacy of 
the Pleiade had begun to wane. 

The new school also attempted to introduce clas- 
sical metres into French poetry. The similar at- 
tempt at using the ancient versification in Italy has 
already been incidentally referred to.^ According 
to Yasari, Leon Battista Alberti, in his epistle, 

" Questa per estrema miserabile pistola mando," 

was the first to attempt to reduce the vernacular 
versification to the measure of the Latins.^ In Octo- 
ber, 1441, the Scena deW Amidzia of Leonardo Dati 
was composed and recited before the Accademia Co- 
ronaria at Florence.* The first two parts of this piece 

1 Ronsard, vii. 320, 332. 

2 The early Italian poetry written in classical metres has 
been collected by Carducci, La Poesia Barbara nei Secoli XV e 
XVI, Bologna, 1881. 

3 Carducci, p. 2. 

4 Ibid. p. 6 sq. 



222 LITERARY CRITICISM IN FRANCE [chap. 

are written in hexameters, the third in Sapphics, the 
fourth in sonnet form and rhymed. The prologues 
of Ariosto's comedies, the Negromante and the Cassa- 
ria, are also in classical metres. But the remarka- 
ble collection of Claudio Tolomei, Versi e Begole de 
la Nuova Poesia Toscana, published at Rome in 
1539, marked an epoch in sixteenth-century letters. 
In this work the employment of classical metres in 
the vulgar tongue is defended, and rules for their 
use given ; then follows a collection of Italian verse 
written after this fashion by a large number of 
scholars and poets, among them Annibal Caro and 
Tolomei himself. This group of scholars had 
formed itself into an esoteric circle, the Accademia 
della Nuova Poesia; and from the tone of the 
verses addressed to Tolomei by the members of 
this circle, it would seem that he regarded himself, 
and was regarded by them, as the founder and ex- 
positor of this poetic innovation.^ Luigi Alamanni, 
whose life was chiefly spent at the Court of Franco, 
published in 1656 a comedy. La Floray written in 
classical metres ; and two years later Francesco 
Patrizzi published an heroic poem, the Eridano, 
written in hexameters, with a defence of the form 
of versification employed.^ 

This learned innovation spread throughout west- 
ern Europe.^ In France, toward the close of the 

1 Carducci, pp. 55, 87, etc. 

2 Ibid. pp. 327, 443. Cf. Du Bellay, Defense, ii. 7. 

8 For the history of classical metres in France, cf. Egger, 
HelUnisme en France, p. 290 sq., and Darmesteter and Hatz- 
feld, Seizieme Steele en France, p. 113 sq. 



III.] ELEMENTS IN FRENCH CRITICISM 223 

fifteenth, century, according to Agrippa d'Aubigne, 
a certain Mousset liad translated the Iliad and the 
Odyssey into French hexameters ; but nothing else 
is known either of Mousset or of his translations. 
As early as 1500 one Michel de Bouteauville, the 
author of an Art de metrifier fra^igois, wrote a poem 
in classical distichs on the English war. Sibilet 
(1548) accepted the use of classical metres, though 
with some distrust, for to him rhyme seemed as 
essential to French poetry as long and short sylla- 
bles to Greek and Latin. In 1562 Ramus, in his 
Grammar, recommended the ancient versification, 
and expressed his regret that it had not been ac- 
cepted with favor by the public. In the same year 
Jacques de la Taille wrote his treatise. La Mani^re 
de faire des Vers en frangois comme en grec et en 
latin, but it was not published until 1573, eleven 
years after his death. His main object in writing 
the book was to show ahat it is not as difficult to 
employ quantity in French verse as some people 
think, nor even any more difficult than in Greek 
and Latin.^ In answer to the objection that the 
vulgar tongues are by their nature incapable of 
quantity, he argues, after the manner of Du Bellay, 
that such things do not proceed from the nature of 
a language, but from the labor and diligence of 
those who employ it. He is tired of vulgar rhymes, 
and is anxious to find a more ingenious and more 

1 Estienne Pasquier, in his Eecherches de la France, vii. 11, 
attempts to prove that the French language is capable of em- 
ploying quantity in its verse, but does not decide whether 
quantity or rhymed verse is to be preferred. 



224 LITERARY CRITICISM IN FRANCE [chap. 

difficult path to Parnassus. He then proceeds to 
treat of quantity and measure in French, of feet 
and verse, and of figures and poetic license.^ 

The name most inseparably connected with the 
introduction of classical metres into France in the 
sixteenth century is that of Jean Antoine de Baif. 
This young member of the Pleiade, after publishing 
several unsuccessful volumes of verse, visited Italy, 
and was present at the Council of Trent in 1563. 
In Italy he doubtless learnt of the metrical innova- 
tions then being employed; and upon his return, 
without any apparent knowledge of Jacques de la 
Taille's as yet unpublished treatise, he set about to 
make a systematic reform in French versification. 
His purpose was to bring about a more perfect uni- 
son between poetry and music; and in order to 
accomplish this, he adopted classical metres, based 
as they were on a musical prosody, and accepted 
the phonetic reforms of Ramus. He also estab- 
lished, no doubt in imitation of the Accademia della 
Nuova Poesia, the Academic de Poesie et de Mu- 
sique, authorized by letters patent from Charles IX. 
in November, 1570.^ The purpose of this cicademy 
was to encourage and establish the metrical and 
musical innovations advocated by Baif and his 
friends. On the death of Charles IX. the society's 
existence was menaced ; but it was restored, with a 

1 Cf. Rucktaschel, p. 24 sg., and Carducci, p. 413 sq. 

2 This academy has been made the subject of an excellent 
monograph by E. Fremy, L'Academie des Derniers Valois, 
Paris, n. d. The statutes of the academy will be found on page 39 
of this work, and the letters-patent granted to it by Charles IX. 
on page 48. 



ill.] ELEMENTS IN FRENCH CRITICISM 225 

broader purpose and function, as the Academie du 
Palais, by Guy du Paur de Pibrac in 1576, under 
the protection of Henry III., and it continued to 
flourish until dispersed by the turmoils of the 
League about 1585. But Baif's innovations were 
not entirely without fruit. A similar movement, 
and a not dissimilar society, will be found some- 
what later in Elizabethan England. 

II. Romantic Elements 

Some of the romantic elements in the critical 
theory of the Pleiade have already been indicated. 
The new movement started, in Du Bellay's Defense, 
with a high conception of the poet's office. It em- 
phasized the necessity, on the part of the poet, of 
profound and solitary ztudy, of a refined and 
ascetic life, and of entire separation from vulgar 
peoplo and pleasures. Du Bcllay himself is roman- 
tic in that he decides against the traditions de regies, ^ 
deeming the good judgment of the poet sufficient 
in matters of taste ; but the reason of this was that 
there were no rules which he would have been will- 
ing to accept. It took more than a century for the 
French mind to o.rrive at the conclusion that reason 
and rules, in matters of art, proceed from one and 
the same cause. 

The feeling for nature and for natural beauty is 
very marked in all the members of the Pldiade. 
Pelletier speaks of war, love, agriculture, and pas- 
toral life as the chief themes of poetry.^ He warns 
1 Defense, ii. 11. 2 Art Po6t. i. 3. 



226 LITERARY CRITICISM IN FRANCE [chap. 

the poet to observe nature and life itself, and not 
depend on books alone ; and lie dwells on the value 
of descriptions of landscapes, tempests, and sunrises, 
and similar natural scenes.^ The feeling for nature 
is even more intense in Eonsard ; and like Pelletier, 
he urges the poet to describe in verse the rivers, 
forests, mountains, winds, the sea, gods and god- 
desses, sunrise, night, and noon.^ In another place 
the poet is advised to embellish his work with ac- 
counts of trees, flowers, and herbs, especially those 
dignified by some medicinal or magical virtues, and 
with descriptions of rivers, towns, forests, moun- 
tains, caverns, rocks, harbors, and forts. Here the 
appreciation of natural beauty as introduced into 
modern Europe by the Italian Eenaissance — the 
feeling for nature in its wider aspects, the broad 
landscape, the distant prospect — first becomes 
visible in France. " In the painting or rather imi- 
tation of nature," says Eonsard, " consists the very 
soul of heroic poetry." 

Eonsard also gives warning that ordinary speech 
is not to be banished from poetry, or too much 
evaded, for by doing so the poet is dealing a death- 
blow to " naive and natural poetry." ^ This sympa- 
thy for the simple and popular forms of poetry as 
models for the poetic artist is characteristic of the 
Pleiade. There is a very interesting passage in 
Montaigne, in which the popular ballads of the 
peasantry are praised in a manner that recalls the 
famous words of Sir Philip Sidney concerning 

1 Art Po€t. ii. 10 ; i. 9. 2 Ronsard, vii. 321, 324. 

8 Ihid. iii. 17 sq_. 



III.] ELEMENTS IN FRENCH CRITICISM 227 

the old song of Percy and Douglas/ and whicli 
seems to anticipate the interest in popular poetry 
in England two centuries later : — 

" Popular and purely natural and indigenous poetry has 
a certain native simplicity and grace by which it may be 
favorably compared with the principal beauty of perfect 
poetry composed according to the rules of art ; as may be 
seen in the villanelles of Gascony, and in songs coming from 
nations that have no knowledge of any science, not even of 
writing. But mediocre poetry, which is neither perfect nor 
popular, is held in disdain by every one, and receives neither 
honor nor reward." 2 

The Pleiade, as has already been intimated, 
accepted without reserve the Platonic doctrine of 
inspiration. By 1560 a considerable number of the 
Platonic dialogues had already been translated into 
French. Dolet had translated two of the spurious 
dialogues ; Duval, the Lysis in 1547 ; and Le E-oy, 
the Fhoedo in 1553 and the Symposium in 1559. 
The thesis of Eamus in 1536 had started an anti- 
Aristotelian tendency in France, and the literature 
of the French Renaissance became impregnated 
with Platonism.^ It received the royal favor of 
Marguerite de Navarre, and its influence became 
fixed in 1551, by the appointment of Eamus to a 
professorship in the College de France. Eonsard, 
Vauquelin, Du Bartas, all give expression to the 
Platonic theory of poetic inspiration. The poet 
must feel what he writes, as Horace says, or his 
reader will never be moved by his verses; and for 

1 Sidney, Defence, p. 29. 

2 Essais, i. 54. 

8 Of. the Revue d'Hist. Hit. de la France, 1896, iii. 1 sq. 



228 LITERARY CRITICISM IN FRANCE [chap. 

the Pleiade, the excitement of high emotions in the 
reader or hearer was the test or touchstone of 
poetry.^ 

The national and Christian points of view never 
found expression in France during the sixteenth 
century in so marked' a manner as in Italy. There 
are, indeed, traces of both a national and a Christian 
criticism, but they are hardly more than sporadic. 
Thus, it has been seen that Sibilet, as early as 1548, 
had clearly perceived the distinguishing character- 
istic of the French genius. He had noted that the 
French have only taken from foreign literature 
what they have deemed useful and of national 
advantage ; and only the other day a distinguished 
French critic asserted in like manner that the high 
importance of French literature consists in the fact 
that it has taken from the other literatures of 
Europe the things of universal interest and disre- 
garded the accidental picturesque details. Distinct 
traces of a national point of view may be found in 
the dramatic criticism of this period. Thus Grevin, 
in his Bref Discours (1562), attempts to justify the 
substitution of a crowd of Caesar's soldiers for the 
singers of the ancient chorus, in one of his tragedies, 
on the following grounds : — 

" If it be alleged that this practice was observed through- 
out antiquity by the Greeks and Latins, I reply that it is 
permitted to us to attempt some innovation of our own, es- 
pecially when there is occasion for it, or when the grace of 
the poem is not diminished thereby. I know well that it 
will be answered that the ancients employed the chorus of 

1 Ronsard, ill. 28 ; Du Bellay, Defense, 11. 11. 



III.] ELEMENTS IN FRENCH CRITICISM 229 

singers to divert the audience, made gloomy perhaps by the 
cruelties represented in the play. To this I reply that 
diverse nations require diverse manners of doing things, and 
that among the French there are other means of doing this 
without interrupting the continuity of a story." i 

The Christian point of view, on the other hand, 
is found in Vanquelin de la Fresnaye, who differs 
from Konsard and Du Bellay in his preference for 
scriptural themes in poetry. The Pleiade was es- 
sentially pagan, Vauquelin essentially Christian. 
The employment of the pagan divinities in modern 
poetry seemed to him often odious, for the times 
had changed, and the Muses were governed by dif- 
ferent laws. The poet should attempt Christian 
themes; and indeed the Greeks themselves, had 
they been Christians, would have sung the life and 
death of Christ. In this passage Vauquelin is evi- 
dently following Minturno, as the latter was after- 
ward followed by Corneille : — 

'• Si les Grecs, comme vous, Chrestiens eussent escrit, 
lis eussent les hauts f aits chants de lesus Christ. . . . 
H^ ! quel plaisir seroit-ce k cette heure de voir 
Nos poetes Chrestiens, les fagons recevoir 
Du tragique ancien ? Et voir k nos misteres 
Les Payens asservis sous les loix sulutaires 
De nos Saints et Martyrs ? et du vieux testament 
Voir une tragedie extraite proprement ? " ^ 

Vauquelin's opinion here is out of keeping with 
the general theory of the Pleiade, especially in 
that his suggestions imply a return to the medi- 

1 Arnaud, app. 11. 

2 Vauquelin, Art Poet. Hi. 845; cf. ill. 33; i. 901. 



230 LITERARY CRITICISM IN FRANCE [chap. 

seval mystery and morality plays. The Uranie 
of Du Bartas is another and more fervid expres- 
sion of this same ideal of Christian poetry. In 
the Semaines, Du Bartas himself composed the 
typical biblical poem; and tragedies on Christian 
or scriptural subjects were composed during the 
French Eenaissance from the time of Buchanan 
and Beza to that of Garnier and Montchrestien. 
But Vauquelin's ideal was not that of the later clas- 
sicism; and Boileau, as has been seen, distinctly 
rejects Christian themes from modern poetry. 

Although the linguistic and prosodic theories of 
the Pleiade partly anticipate both the theory and 
the practice of later classicism, the members of the 
school exhibit numerous deviations from what was 
afterward accepted as inviolable law in French 
poetry. The most important of these deviations con- 
cerns the use of words from the various French dia- 
lects, from foreign tongues, and from the technical 
and mechanical arts. A partial expression of this 
theory of poetic language has already been seen in 
Du Bellay's Defense et Illustration, in which the 
poet is urged to use the more elegant technical dia- 
lectic terms. Ronsard gives very much the same 
advice. The best words in all the French dialects 
are to be employed by the poet ; for it is doubtless to 
the number of the dialects of Greece that we may 
ascribe the supreme beauty of its language and 
literature. The poet is not to affect too much the 
language of the court, since it is often very bad, being 
the language of ladies and of young gentlemen who 
make a profession of fighting well rather than of 



III.] ELEMENTS IN FRENCH CRITICISM 231 

speaking well.^ Unlike Mallierbe and his school, 
Eonsard allows a certain amount of poetic license, 
but only rarely and judiciously. It is to poetic 
license, he says, that we owe nearly all the beau- 
tiful figures with which poets, in their divine rapture, 
enfranchising the laws of grammar, have enriched 
their works. "This is that birthright," said Dry- 
den, a century later, in the preface of his State of 
Innocence and the Fall of Man, " which is derived 
to us from our great forefathers, even from Homer 
down to Ben ; and they who would deny it to us 
have, in plain terms, the fox's quarrel to the grapes 
— they cannot reach it." Vauquelin de la Eres- 
naye follows Eonsard and Du Bellay in urging the 
use of new and dialect words, the employment of 
terms and comparisons from the mechanic arts, 
and the various other doctrines by which the 
Pleiade is distinguished from the school of Mal- 
herbe. How these useless linguistic innovations 
were checked and banished from the French lan- 
guage forever will be briefly alluded to in the 
next chapter. 

1 Ronsard, vii. 322. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE FORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL IN THE 
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 

I. The Romantic Revolt 

It is a "well-knowii fact that between 1600 and 
1630 there was a break in the national evolution 
of French literature. This was especially so in 
the drama, and in France the drama is the con- 
necting link between century and century. The 
dramatic works of the sixteenth century had been 
fashioned after the regular models borrowed by 
the Italians from Seneca. The change that came 
was a change from Italian classical to Spanish 
romantic models. The note of revolt was begin- 
ning to be heard in Grevin, De Laudun, and others. 
The seventeenth century opened with the production 
of Hardy's irregular drama, Les Amours de Th^ob- 
g^ne et Cariclee (1601), and the influence of the 
Spanish romantic drama and the Italian pastoral, 
dominant for over a quarter of a century, was in- 
augurated in France. 

The logic of this innovation was best expounded 
in Spain, and it was there that arguments in favor 
of the romantic and irregular drama were first 
formulated. The two most interesting defences of 
the Spanish national drama are doubtless the 
232 



CHAP. IV.] FORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 233 

Egemplar Portico of Juan de la Cueva (1606) and 
Lope de Vega's Arte Nuevo de Hacer Comedias 
(1609). Their inspiration is at bottom the same. 
Their authors were both classicists at heart, or 
rather classicists in theory, yet with differences. 
Juan de la Cueva's conception of poetry is entirely 
based on the precepts of the Italians, except in 
what regards the national drama, for here he is a 
partisan and a patriot. He insists that the differ- 
ence of time and circumstance frees the Spanish 
playwright from all necessity of imitating the 
ancients or obeying their rules. " This change in 
the drama," he says, ^'was effected by wise men, 
who applied to new conditions the new things they 
found most suitable and expedient; for we must 
consider the various opinions, the times, and the 
manners, which make it necessary for us to change 
and vary our operations."^ His theory of the 
drama was entirely opposed to his conception of the 
other forms of poetry. According to this stand- 
point, as a recent writer has put it, "the theatre 
was to imitate nature, and to please ; poetry was to 
imitate the Italians, and satisfy the orthodox but 
minute critic."^ Lope de Vega, writing three 
years later, does not deny the universal applicabil- 
ity of the Aristotelian canons, and even acknowl- 
edges that they are the only true rules. But the 
people demand romantic plays, and the people, 
rather than the poet's literary conscience, must be 
satisfied by the playwright. " I myself," he says, 

1 Sedano, Parnaso Espanol, viii. 61. 

2 Hannay, ^ater Renaissance, 1898, p. 39. 



234 LITERARY CRITICISM IN FRANCE [chap. 

"write comedies according to the art invented by 
those whose sole object it is to obtain the applause 
of the crowd. After all, since it is the public who 
pays for these stupidities, why should we not serve 
what it wants ? " ^ 

Perhaps the most interesting of all the exposi- 
tions of the theory of the Spanish national drama 
is a defence of Lope de Vega's plays by one Alfonso 
Sanchez, published in 1618 in France, or possibly 
in Spain with a false French imprint. The apology 
of Sanchez is comprehended in six distinct proposi- 
tions. First, the arts have their foundation in 
nature. Secondly, a wise and learned man may 
alter many things in the existing arts. Thirdly, 
nature does not obey laws, but gives them. 
Fourthly, Lope de Vega has done well in creating 
a new art. Fifthly, in his writings everything is 
adjusted to art, and that a real and living art. 
Lastly, Lope de Vega has surpassed all the ancient 
poets.^ The following passage may be extracted 
from this treatise, if only to show how little there 
was of novelty in the tenets of the French roman- 
ticists two centuries later : — 

"Is it said that we have no infallible art by which to 
adjust our precepts ? But who can doubt it ? We have art, 
we have precepts and rules which bind us, and the principal 
precept is to imitate nature, for the works of poets express 
the nature, the manners, and the genius of the age in which 
they write. . . . Lope de Vega writes in conformity with 
art, because he follows nature. If, on the contrary, the 
Spanish drama adjusted itself to the rules and laws of the 

1 Menendez y Pelayo, iii. 434. 2 Jbid. iii. 447 sq. 



IV.] FORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 235 

ancients, it would proceed against the requirements of 
nature, and against the foundations of poetry. . . . The 
great Lope has done things over and above the laws of the 
ancients, but never against these laws." 

Another Spanish, writer defines art as " an attentive 
observation of examples graded by experience, and 
reduced to method and the majesty of laws."^ 

It was this naturalistic conception of the poetic 
art, and especially of the drama, that obtained in 
France during the first thirty years of the seven- 
teenth century. The French playwrights imitated 
the Spanish drama in practice, and from the Span- 
ish theorists seemed to have derived the critical justi- 
fication of their plays. Hardy himself, like Lope de 
Vega, argues that " everything which is approved by 
usage and the public taste is legitimate and more 
than legitimate." Another writer of this time, Fran- 
Qois Ogier, in the preface of the second edition of 
Jean de Schelandre's remarkable drama of Tyr et 
Sidon (1628), argues for intellectual independence of 
the ancients much in the same way as Giraldi Cintio, 
Pigna, and the other partisans of the romanzi had 
done three-quarters of a century before. The taste 
of every nation, he says, is quite different from any 
other. " The Greeks wrote for the Greeks, and in 
the judgment of the best men of their time they 
succeeded. But we should imitate them very much 
better by giving heed to the tastes of our own 
country, and the genius of our own language, than 
by forcing ourselves to follow step by step both 
their intention and their expression." This would 
1 Menendez y Pelayo, ill. 464. 



236 LITERARY CRITICISM IN FRANCE [chap. 

seem to be at bottom Goethe's famous statement 
that we can best imitate the Greeks by trying to 
be as great men as they were. It is interesting to 
note, in all of these early critics, traces of that his- 
torical criticism which is usually regarded as the 
discovery of our own century. But after all, the 
French like the Spanish playwrights were merely 
beginning to practise what the Italian dramatists 
in their prefaces, and some of the Italian critics 
in their treatises, had been preaching for nearly a 
century. 

The Abbe d'Aubignac speaks of Hardy as 
"arresting the progress of the French theatre''; 
and whatever practical improvements the French 
theatre owes to him, there can be little doubt that 
for a certain number of years the evolution of the 
classical drama was partly arrested by his efforts 
and the efforts of his school. But during this 
very period the foundations of the great literature 
that was to come were being built on classical 
lines; and the continuance of the classical tradi- 
tion after 1630 was due to three distinct causes, 
each of which will be discussed by itself as briefly 
as possible. These three causes were the reaction 
against the Pleiade, the second influx of the critical 
ideas of the Italian Kenaissance, and the influence 
of the rationalistic philosophy of the period. 

II. The Reaction against the Pleiade 

The reaction against the Pleiade was effected, or 
at least begun, by Malherbe. Malherbe's power or 



IV.] FORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 237 

message as a poet is of no concern here ; in his role of 
grammarian and critic lie accomplished certain im- 
portant and widespread reforms in French poetry. 
These reforms were connected chiefly, if not en- 
tirely, with the external or formal side of poetry. 
His work was that of a grammarian, of a prosodist 
— in a word, that of a purist. He did not, indeed, 
during his lifetime, publish any critical work, or 
formulate any critical system. But the reforms he 
executed were on this account no less influential or 
enduring. His critical attitude is to be looked for 
in the memoirs of his life written by his disciple 
Eacan, and in his own Commentaire sur Desportes, 
which was not published in its entirety until very 
recently.^ This commentary consists of a series of 
manuscript notes written by Malherbe about the 
year 1606 in the margins of a copy of Desportes. 
These notes are of a most fragmentary kind; they 
seldom go beyond a word or two of disapproval, 
such as faible, mat congu, superflu, sans jugementy 
sottise, or mal imagine ; and yet, together with a 
few detached utterances recorded in his letters and 
in the memoirs by Eacan, they indicate quite clearly 
the critical attitude of Malherbe and the reforms 
he was bent on bringing about. 

These reforms were, in the first place, largely 
linguistic. The Pleiade had attempted to widen 
the sphere of poetic expression in French litera- 

1 The Commentaire is printed entire in Lalanne's edition of 
Malherbe, Paris, 1862, vol. iv. The critical doctrine of Mal- 
herbe has been formulated by Brunot, Doctrine de Malherbe, 
pp. 105-236. 



238 LITERARY CRITICISM IN FRANCE [chap. 

ture by the introduction of words from tlie classics, 
from the Italian and even the Spanish, from the 
provincial dialects, from the old romances, and from 
the terminology of the mechanic arts. All these 
archaisms, neologisms, Latinisms, compound words, 
and dialectic and technical expressions, Malherbe 
set about to eradicate from the French language. 
His object was to purify French, and, as it were, to 
centralize it. The test he set up was actual usage, 
and even this was narrowed down to the usage of 
the court. Eonsard had censured the exclusive use 
of courtly speech in poetry, on the ground that the 
courtier cares more about fighting well than about 
speaking or writing well. But Malherbe' s ideal 
was the ideal of French classicism — the ideal of 
Boileau, Racine, and Bossuet. French was to be 
no longer a hodgepodge or a patois, but the pure 
and perfect speech of the king and his court. 
Malherbe, while thus reacting against the Pleiade, 
made no pretensions of returning to the linguistic 
usages of Marot; his test was present usage, his 
model the living language.^ At the same time his 
reforms in language, as in other things, represent a 
reaction against foreign innovations and a return 
to the pure French idiom. They were in the in- 
terest of the national traditions; and it is this 
national element which is his share in the body 
of neo-classical theory and practice. His reforms 
were all in the direction of that verbal and me- 
chanical perfection, the love of which is innate in 
the French nature, and which forms the indigenous 
1 Cf, Horace, Ars Poet. 71, 72. 



IV.] FORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 239 

or racial element in French, classicism. He elimi- 
nated from French verse hiatus, enjambement, in- 
versions, false and imperfect rhymes, and licenses 
or cacophonies of all kinds. He gave it, as has 
been said, mechanical perfection, — 

" Et r^duisit la Muse aux regies du devoir." 

For such a man — tyran des mots et des syllabes, 
as Balzac called him — the higher qualities of poetry 
could have little or no meaning. His ideals were 
propriety, clearness, regularity, and force. These, 
as Chapelain perceived at the time, are oratorical 
rather than purely poetic qualities ; yet for these, 
all the true qualities that go to make up a great 
poet were to be sacrificed. Of imagination and 
poetic sensibility he takes no account whatsoever. 
After the verbal perfection of the verse, the logical 
unity of the poem was his chief interest. Logic 
and reason are without doubt important things, but 
they cannot exist in poetry to the exclusion of 
imagination. By eliminating inspiration, as it 
were, Malherbe excluded the possibility of lyrical 
production in France throughout the period of 
classicism. He hated poetic fictions, since for him, 
as for Boileau, only actual reality is beautiful. If he 
permitted the employment of mythological figures, 
it was because they are reasonable and universally 
intelligible symbols. The French, mind is essen- 
tially rational and logical, and Malherbe reintro- 
duced this native rationality into French poetry. 
He set up common sense as a poetic ideal, and 
made poetry intelligible to the average mind. The 



240 LITERARY CRITICISM IN FRANCE [chap. 

Pleiade had written for a learned literary coterie ; 
Malherbe wrote for learned and unlearned alike. 
For the Pleiade, poetry had been a divine office, a 
matter of prophetic inspiration; for Malherbe, it 
was a trade, a craft, to be learnt like any other. 
Du Bellay had said that " it is a well-accepted fact, 
according to the most learned men, that natural 
talents without learning can accomplish more in 
poetry than learning without natural talents." 
Malherbe, it has been neatly said, would have 
upheld the contrary doctrine that " learning with- 
out natural talents can accomplish more than 
natural talents without learning." ^ After all, 
eloquence was Malherbe's ideal ; and as the French 
are by nature an eloquent rather than a poetic peo- 
ple, he deserves the honor of having first shown 
them how to regain their true inheritance. In a 
word, he accomplished for classical poetry in France 
all that the national instinct, the esprit gaulois, 
could accomplish by itself. Consistent structural 
laws for the larger poetic forms he could not give ; 
these France owes to Italy. Nor could he appre- 
ciate the high notion of abstract perfection, or the 
classical conception of an absolute standard of 
taste — that of several expressions or several ways 
of doing something, one way. and only one is the 
right one ; this France owes to rationalistic philos- 
ophy. Malherbe seems almost to be echoing Mon- 
taigne when he says in a letter to Balzac : — 

"Do you not know that the diversity of opinions is as 
natural as the difference of men's faces, and that to wish 

1 Brunot, p. 149. 



IV.] rOKMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 241 

that what pleases or displeases us should please or displease 
everybody is to pass the limits where it seems that God in 
His omnipotence has commanded us to stop ? " ^ 

With, this individualistic expression of the questions 
of opinion and taste, we have but to compare the 
following passage from La Bruyere to indicate how 
far Malherbe is still from the classic ideal : — 

" There is a point of perfection in art, as of excellence or 
maturity in nature. He who is sensible of it and loves it has 
perfect taste ; he who is not sensible of it and loves this or 
that else on either side of it has a faulty taste. There is 
then a good and a bad taste, and men dispute of tastes not 
without reason." 2 



III. The Second Influx of Italian Ideas 

The second influx of Italian critical ideas into 
France came through two channels. In the first 
place, the direct literary relations between Italy 
and France during this period were very marked. 
The influence of Marino, who lived for a long time 
at Paris and published a number of his works 
there, was not inconsiderable, especially upon the 
French concettists and precieux. Two Italian 
ladies founded and presided over the famous Hotel 
de Eambouillet, — Julie Savelli, Marquise de Pisani, 
and Catherine de Vivonne, Marquise de Eambouillet. 
It was partly to the influence of the Accademia 
della Crusca that the foundation of the French 
Academy was due. Chapelain and Menage were 

1 (Euvres, Lalanne's edition, iv. 91. 

2 Caracteres, " Des Ouvrages de TEsprit." 



242 LITERARY CRITICISM IN FRANCE [chap. 

both members of the Italian society, and submitted 
to it their different opinions on a verse of Petrarch. 
Like the Accademia della Crusca, the French Acad- 
emy purposed the preparation of a great dictionary ; 
and each began its existence by attacking a great 
work of literature, the Gerusalemme Liberata in 
the case of the Italian society, Corneille's Cid in 
the case of the French. The regency of Marie de 
Medici, the supremacy of Mazarin, and other politi- 
cal events, all conspired to bring Italy and France 
into the closest social and literary relationship. 

But the two individuals who first brought into 
French literature and naturalized the primal criti- 
cal concepts of Italy were Chapelain and Balzac. 
Chapelain's private correspondence indicates how 
thorough was his acquaintance with the critical 
literature of Italy. " 1 have a particular affection 
for the Italian language," he wrote in 1639 to Bal- 
zac.^ Of the Cid, he says that " in Italy it would 
be considered barbarous, and there is not an acad- 
emy which would not banish it beyond the confines 
of its jurisdiction." ^ Speaking of the greatness of 
Eonsard, he says that his own opinion was in 
accord with that of '' two great savants beyond the 
Alps, Speroni and Castelvetro " ; ^ and he had con- 
siderable correspondence with Balzac on the subject 
of the controversy between Caro and Castelvetro in 
the previous century. In a word, he knew and 

1 Lettres, i. 413. The references are to the edition by Tami- 
zey de Larroque, Paris, 1880-1883. 

2 Ibid. 1. 156. 

8 Ibid. i. 631 sq. 



IV.] FORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 243 

studied the critics and scholars of Italy, and was 
interested in discussing them. Balzac's interest, 
on the other hand, was rather toward Spanish 
literature ; but he was the agent of the Cardinal de 
la Yalette at Eome, and it was on his return to 
France that he published the first collection of his 
letters. The influence of both Chapelain and Bal- 
zac on French classicism was considerable. During 
the sixteenth century, literary criticism had been 
entirely in the hands of learned men. Chapelain 
and Balzac vulgarized the critical ideas of the 
Italian Eenaissance, and made them popular, hu- 
man, but inviolable. Balzac introduced into France 
the fine critical sense of the Italians ; Chapelain 
introduced their formal rules, and imposed the 
three unities on French tragedy. Together they 
effected a humanizing of the classical ideal, even 
while subjecting it to rules. 

It was to the same Italian influences that France 
owed the large number of artificial epics that ap- 
peared during this period. About ten epics were 
published in the fifteen years between 1650 and 
1665.^ The Italians of the sixteenth century had 
formulated a fixed theory of the artificial epic ; and 
the nations of western Europe rivalled one another 
in attempting to make practical use of this theory. 
It is to this that the large number of Spanish epics 
in the sixteenth century and of French epics in the 
seventeenth may be ascribed. Among the latter 

1 These epics have been treated at length by Duchesne, 
Histoire des Poemes Epiques frangais du X VII Siecle, Paris, 
1870. 



244 LITERARY CRITICISM IN FRANCE [chap. 

we may mention Scudery's Alaric, Lemoyne's Saint 
Louis, Saint-Amant's Moyse Saitve, and Chapelain's 
own epic, La Pucelle, awaited by the public for 
many years, and published only to be damned for- 
ever by Boileau. 

The prefaces of all these epics indicate clearly 
enough their indebtedness to the Italians. They 
were indeed scarcely more than attempts to put the 
rules and precepts of the Italian Renaissance into 
practice. "I then consulted the masters of this 
art," says Scudery, in the preface of Alaric, " that 
is to say, Aristotle and Horace, and after them 
Macrobius, Scaliger, Tasso, Castelvetro, Piccolom- 
ini, Yida, Vossius, Eobortelli, Riccoboni, Paolo 
Beni, Mambrun, and several others; and passing 
from theory to practice I reread very carefully the 
Iliad and the Odyssey, the JEneid, the Pharsalia, 
the Thebaid, the Orlando F arioso, and the Gerusor 
lemme Liberata, and many other epic poems in 
diverse languages." Similarly, Saint-Amant, in 
the preface of his Moyse Sauve, says that he had 
rigorously observed "the unities of action and 
place, which are the principal requirements of the 
epic ; and besides, by an entirely new method, I 
have restricted my subject not only within twenty- 
four hours, the limit of the dramatic poem, but 
almost within half of that time. This is more than 
even Aristotle, Horace, Scaliger, Castelvetro, Pic- 
colomini, and all the other moderns have ever 
required." It is obvious that for these epic-makers 
the rules and precepts of the Italians were the final 
tests of heroic poetry. Similarly, the Abbe d'Au- 



IV.] FORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 245 

bignac, at the beginning of his Pratique du TTiedtre, 
advises the dramatic poet to study, among other 
writers, "Aristotle, Horace, Castelvetro, Vida, 
Heinsius, Vossius, and Scaliger, of whom not a 
word should be lost." From the Italians also came 
the theory of poetry in general as held throughout 
the period of classicism, and expounded by the 
Abbe d'Aubignac, La Mesnardiere, Corneille, Boi- 
leau, and numerous others ; and it is hardly neces- 
sary to repeat that Rapin, tracing the history of 
criticism at the beginning of his Reflexions sur la 
PoetiquBy deals with scarcely any critics but the 
Italians. 

Besides the direct influence of the Italian critics, 
another influence contributed its share to the sum 
of critical ideas which French classicism owes to 
the Italian Renaissance. This was the tradition of 
Scaliger, carried on by the Dutch scholars Heinsius 
and Vossius. Daniel Heinsius was the pupil of 
Joseph Scaliger, the illustrious son of the author of 
the Poetics ; and through Heinsius the dramatic 
theories of the elder Scaliger influenced classical 
tragedy in France. The treatise of Heinsius, De 
Tragoedice Constitutione, published at Leyden in 
1611, was called by Chapelain " the quintessence of 
Aristotle's Poetics " ; and Chapelain called Hein- 
sius himself " a prophet or sibyl in matters of criti- 
cism." ^ Annoted by E,acine, cited as an infallible 
authority by Corneille, Heinsius's work exercised 

1 Lettres, i. 269, 424. On the theories of Heinsius, see Zerbst, 
Ein Vorldufer Lessings in der Aristotelesinterpretation, Jena, 
1887. 



246 LITERARY CRITICISM IN FRANCE [chap. 

a marked influence on Prench. tragedy by fixing 
upon it the laws of Scaliger ; and later the works 
of Vossius cooperated with those of Heinsius in 
widening the sphere of the Italian influence. It is 
evident, therefore, that while French literature had 
already during the sixteenth century taken from the 
Italian Eenaissance its respect for antiquity and its 
admiration for classical mythology, the seventeenth 
century owed to Italy its definitive conception of the 
theory of poetry, and especially certain rigid struc- 
tural laws for tragedy and epic. It may be said 
without exaggeration that there is not an essential 
idea or precept in the works of Corneille and 
D'Aubignac on dramatic poetry, or of Le Bossu and 
Mambrun on epic poetry, that cannot be found in 
the critical writings of the Italian Renaissance. 

IV. Tlie Influence of Bationalistic Philosophy 

The influence of rationalistic philosophy on the 
general attitude of classicism manifested itself in 
what may be called the gradual rationalization of all 
that the Eenaissance gave to France. The process 
thus effected is most definitely exhibited in the evo- 
lution of the rules which France owed to Italy. It 
has already been shown how the rules and precepts 
of the Italians had originally been based on author- 
ity alone, but had gradually obtained a general sig- 
nificance of their own, regardless of their ancient 
authority. Somewhat later, in England, the Aristo- 
telian canons were defended by Ben Jonson on the 
ground that Aristotle understood the causes of 



IV.] FORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 247 

things, and ttiat what others had done by chance 
or custom, Aristotle did by reason alone.^ By this 
time, then, the reasonableness of the Aristotelian 
canons was distinctly felt, although they were still 
regarded as having authoritativeness in themselves ; 
and it was first in the French classicists of the 
seventeenth century that reason and the ancient 
rules were regarded as one and inseparable. 

Rationalism, indeed, is to be found at the very out- 
set of the critical activity of the Renaissance ; and 
Vida's words, already cited, *' Semper nutu rationis 
eant res," represent in part the attitude of the Re- 
naissance mind toward literature. But the ^'rea- 
son " of the earlier theorists was merely empirical 
and individualistic; it did not differ essentially 
from Horace's ideal of " good sense." In fact, ra- 
tionalism and humanism, while existing together 
throughout the Renaissance, were never to any ex- 
tent harmonized ; and extreme rationalism generally 
took the form of an avowed antagonism to Aristotle. 
The complete rationalization of the laws of litera- 
ture is first evident toward the middle of the seven- 
teenth century. " The rules of the theatre," says 
the Abbe d'Aubignac, at the beginning of his 
Pratique du Thedtre, " are founded, not on author- 
ity, but on reason," and if they are called the rules 
of the ancients, it is simply " because the ancients 
have admirably practised them." Similarly, Cor- 
neille, in his discourse Des Trois Unites, says that 
the unity of time would be arbitrary and tyrannical 
if it were merely required by Aristotle's Poetics, 
1 Discoveries, p. 80. 



248 LITERARY CRITICISM IN FRANCE [chap. 

but that its real prop is the natural reason ; and 
Boileau sums up the final attitude of classicism in 
these words : — 

" Aimez done la raison ; que toujours vos Merits 
Empruntent d''elle seule et leur lustre et leur prix." i 

Here the rationalizing process is complete, and the 
actual requirements of authority become identical 
with the dictates of the reason. 

The rules expounded by Boileau, while for the 
most part the same as those enunciated by the Ital- 
ians, are no longer mere rules. They are laws dic- 
tated by abstract and universal reason, and hence 
inevitable and infallible; they are not tyrannical 
or arbitrary, but imposed upon us by the very na- 
ture of the human mind. This is not merely, as 
we have said, the good nature and the good sense, 
in a word, the sweet reasonableness, of such a critic 
as Horace.^ There is more than this in the classi- 
cists of the seventeenth century. Good sense be- 
comes universalized, becomes, in fact, as has been 
said, not merely an empirical notion of good sense, 
but the abstract and universal reason itself. From 
this follows the absolute standard of taste at the 
bottom of classicism, as exemplified in the passage 
already cited from La Bruyere, and in such a line 
as this from Boileau : — 

"La raison pour marcher n'a souvent qu'une voie." ' 
This rationalization of the Renaissance rules of 

1 Art Po€t. i. 37. 

2 Cf. Brunetiere, Etudes Critiques, iv. 136 ; and Krantz, p. 93 
sq. 

3 Art Po€t. i. 48. 



IV.] FORMATION OF THE CLASSIC IDEAL 249 

poetry was effected by contemporary philosophy; 
if not by the works and doctrines of Descartes him- 
self, at least by the general tendency of the human 
mind at this period, of which these works and doc- 
trines are the most perfect expressions. Boileau's 
Art Poetique has been aptly called the Discours de 
la Methode of French poetry. So that while the 
contribution of Malherbe and his school to classi- 
cism lay in the insistence on clearness, propriety, 
and verbal and metrical perfection, and the contri- 
bution of the Italian Eenaissance lay in the infusion 
of respect for classical antiquity and the imposition 
of a certain body of fixed rules, the contribution of 
contemporary philosophy lay in the rationalization 
or universalization of these rules, and in the imposi- 
tion of an abstract and absolute standard of taste. 

But Cartesianism brought with it certain impor- 
tant limitations and deficiencies. Boileau himself 
is reported to have said that "the philosophy of 
Descartes has cut the throat of poetry ; " ^ and there 
can be no doubt that this is the exaggerated expres- 
sion of a certain inevitable truth. The excessive 
insistence on the reason brought with it a corre- 
sponding undervaluation of the imagination. The 
rational and rigidly scientific basis of Cartesianism 
was forced on classicism ; and reality became its 
supreme object and its final test : — 

"Rien n'est beau que le vrai." 

Reference has already been made to various dis- 
advantages imposed on classicism by the very nature 

1 Reported by J. B. Rousseau, in a letter to Brossette, July 21, 
1715. 



250 LITEKARY CRITICISM IN FRANCE [chap. iv. 

of its origin and growth; but the most vital of all 
these disadvantages was the influence of the Car- 
tesian philosophy or philosophic temper. With 
the scientific basis thus imposed on literature, its 
only safeguard against extinction was the vast in- 
fluence of a certain body of fixed rules, which lit- 
erature dared not deviate from, and which it 
attempted to justify on the wider grounds of phi- 
losophy. These rules, then, the contribution of 
Italy, saved poetry in France from extinction dur- 
ing the classical period ; and of this a remarkable 
confirmation is to be found in the fact that not un- 
til the rationalism of the seventeenth and eighteenth 
centuries w^as superseded in France, did French lit- 
erature rid itself of this body of Kenaissance rules. 
Cartesianism, or at least the rationalistic spirit, 
humanized these rules, and imposed them on the 
rest of Europe. But though quintessentialized, 
they remained artificial, and circumscribed the 
workings of the French imagination for over a 
century. 



Part Third 

LITERARY CRITICISM IN ENGLAND 



LITERARY CRITICISM IN ENGLAND 



CHAPTER I 

THE EVOLUTION OF ENGLISH CRITICISM FROM 
ASCHAM TO MILTON 

Literary criticism in England during the Eliz- 
abethan age was neither so influential nor so rich 
and varied as the contemporary criticism of Italy 
and France. This fact might perhaps be thought 
insufiS-cient to affect the interest or patriotism of 
English-speaking people, yet the most charming 
critical monument of this period, Sidney's Defence 
of Poesy, has been slightingly referred to by the 
latest historian of English poetry. Such interest 
and importance as Elizabethan criticism possesses 
must therefore be of an historical nature, and lies 
in two distinct directions. In the first place, the 
study of the literature of this period will show, 
not only that there was a more or less complete 
body of critical doctrine during the Renaissance, 
but also that Englishmen shared in this creation, 
or inheritance, of the Renaissance as truly as did 
their continental neighbors ; and on the other hand 
this study may be said to possess an interest in itself, 
in so far as it will make the growth of classicism in 
England intelligible, and will indicate that the 
253 



254 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ENGLAND [chap. 

formation of the classic ideal had begun before the 
introduction of the French influence. In neither 
case, however, can early English criticism be con- 
sidered wholly apart from the general body of 
Eenaissance doctrine ; and its study loses in impor- 
tance and perspicuity according as it is kept dis- 
tinct from the consideration of the critical literature 
of France, and especially of Italy. 

English criticism, during the sixteenth and seven- 
teenth centuries, passed through five more or less 
distinct stages of development. The first stage, 
characterized by the purely rhetorical study of 
literature, may be said to begin with Leonard 
Coxe's Arte or Crafte of Rhetoryke, a hand-book for 
young students, compiled about 1524, chiefly from 
one of the rhetorical treatises of Melanchthon.^ This 
was followed by Wilson's Arte of Bhetorike (1553), 
which is more extensive and certainly more origi- 
nal than Coxe's manual, and which has been called 
by Warton " the first book or system of criticism 
in our language." But the most important figure 
of this period is Eoger Ascham. The educational 
system expounded in his Scliolemaster, written 
between 1563 and 1568, he owed largely to his 
friend, John Sturm, the Strasburg humanist, and 
to his teacher. Sir John Cheke, who had been 
Greek lecturer at the University of Padua; but 
for -the critical portions of this work he seems 
directly indebted to the rhetorical treatises of the 
Italians.^ Yet his obligations to the Italian human- 

1 Cf. Mod. Lang. Notes, 1898, xiii. 293. 

2 Cf. Ascham, Works, ii. 174-191. 



1.] EVOLUTION OF ENGLISH CRITICISM 255 

ists did not prevent the expression of his stern and 
unyielding antagonism to the romantic Italian spirit 
as it influenced the imaginative literature of his 
time. In studying early English literature it must 
always be kept in mind that the Italian Renais- 
sance influenced the Elizabethan age in two differ- 
ent directions. The Italianization of English poetry 
had been effected, or at least begun, by the publi- 
cation of TottePs Miscellany in 1557 ; on this, the 
creative side of English literature, the Italian 
influence was distinctly romantic. The influence 
of the Italian humanists, on the other hand, was 
directly opposed to this romantic spirit ; even in 
their own country they had antagonized all that 
was not classical in tendency. Ascham, therefore, 
as a result of his humanistic training, became not 
only the first English man of letters, but also the 
first English classicist. 

The first stage of English criticism, then, was 
entirely given up to rhetorical study. It was at 
this time that English writers first attained the 
appreciation of form and style as distinguishing 
features of literature ; and it was to this appre- 
ciation that the formation of an English prose 
style was due. This period may therefore be com- 
pared with the later stages of Italian humanism in 
the fifteenth century ; and the later humanists were 
the masters and models of these early English 
rhetoricians. Gabriel Harvey, as a Ciceronian of 
the school of Bembo, was perhaps their last repre- 
sentative. 

The second stage of English criticism — a period 



256 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ENGLAND [chap. 

of classification and especially of metrical studies — 
commences with. Gascoigne's Notes of Instruction 
concerning the making of Verse,^ published in 1575, 
and modelled apparently on Eonsard's Ahrege de 
I'Art Poetique frangois (1565). Besides this brief 
pamphlet, the first work on English versification, 
this stage also includes Puttenham's Arte of Eng- 
lish Poesie, the first systematic classification of 
poetic forms and subjects, and of rhetorical figures ; 
Bullokar's Bref Grammar, the first systematic 
treatise on English grammar ; and Harvey's Letters 
and Webbe's Discourse of English Poetrie, the first 
systematic attempts to introduce classical metres 
into English poetry. This period was charac- 
terized by the study and classification of the 
practical questions of language and versification; 
and in this labor it was cooperating with the very 
tendencies which Ascham had been attempting to 
counteract. The study of the verse-forms intro- 
duced into England from Italy helped materially 
to perfect the external side of English poetry ; and 
a similar result was obtained by the crude attempts 
at quantitative verse suggested by the school of 
Tolomei. The Italian prosodists were thus, directly 
or indirectly, the masters of the English students 
of this era. 

The representative work of the third stage — the 
period of philosophical and apologetic criticism — is 
Sir Philip Sidney's Defence of Poesy, published post- 
humously in 1595, though probably written about 

1 The Reulis and Cautelis of Scottis Poesie by James VI. of 
Scotland is wholly based on Gascoigne's treatise. 



I.] EVOLUTION OF ENGLISH CRITICISM 257 

1583. Harington's Apologie of Poetrie, Daniel's 
Defence of Byrne, and a few others, are also contem- 
porary treatises. These works, as their titles in- 
dicate, are all defences or apologies, and were called 
forth by the attacks of the Puritans on poetry, 
especially dramatic poetry, and the attacks of the 
classicists on English versification and rhyme. 
E-equired by the exigencies of the moment to de- 
fend poetry in general, these authors did not 
attempt to do so on local or temporary grounds, but 
set out to examine the fundamental grounds of 
criticism, and to formulate the basic principles of 
poetry. In this attempt they consciously or uncon- 
sciously sought aid from the critics of Italy, and thus 
commenced in England the influence of the Italian 
theory of poetry. How great was their indebted- 
ness to the Italians the course of the present study 
will make somewhat clear; but it is certainly re- 
markable that this indebtedness has never been 
pointed out before. Speaking of Sidney's Defence 
of Poesy, one of the most distinguished English 
authorities on the Eenaissance says: "Much as 
the Italians had recently written upon the theory 
of poetry, I do not remember any treatise which can 
be said to have supplied the material or suggested 
the method of this apology." ^ On the contrary, 
the doctrines discussed by Sidney had been receiv- 
ing very similar treatment from the Italians for 
over half a century ; and it can be said without ex- 
aggeration that there is not an essential principle in 

'- J. A. Symonds, Sir Philip Sidney, p. 157. Cf. also, Sidney, 
Defence, Cook's introduction, p. xxvii. 



258 LITERAHY CRITICISM IN ENGLAND [chap. 

the Defence of Poesy which cannot be traced back 
to some Italian treatise on the poetic art. The age 
of which Sidney is the chief representative is there- 
fore the first period of the influence of Italian critics. 
The fourth stage of English criticism, of which 
Ben Jonson is, as it were, the presiding genius, 
occupies the first half of the seventeenth century. 
The period that preceded it was in general romantic 
in its tendencies ; that of Jonson leaned toward a 
strict though never servile classicism. Sidney's 
contemporaries had studied the general theory of 
poetry, not for the purpose of enunciating rules or 
dogmas of criticism, but chiefly in order to defend 
the poetic art, and to understand its fundamental 
principles. The spirit of the age was the spirit, let 
us say, of Fracastoro; that of Jonson was, in a 
moderate form, the spirit of Scaliger or Castelvetro. 
With Jonson the study of the art of poetry became 
an inseparable guide to creation; and it is this 
element of self-conscious art, guided by the rules 
of criticism, which distinguishes him from his 
predecessors. The age which he represents is 
therefore the second period of the influence of 
Italian criticism ; and the same influence also is to 
be seen in such critical poems as Suckling's Session 
of the Poets, and the Great Assises holden in Par- 
nassus, ascribed to Wither, both of which may be 
traced back to the class of critical poetry of which 
Boccalini's Ragguagli di Parnaso is the type.^ 

1 Cy. Foffauo, p. 173 sq. In Spain, Lope de Vega's Laurel de 
Apolo and Cervantes' Viage del Parnaso belong to the same 
class of poems. 



I.] EVOLUTION OF ENGLISH CRITICISM 259 

The fifth period, which covers the second half 
of the seventeenth century, is characterized by 
the introduction of French influence, and begins 
with Davenant's letter to Hobbes, and Hobbes's 
answer, both prefixed to the epic of Gondibert 
(1651). These letters, written while Davenant 
and Hobbes were at Paris, display many of the 
characteristic features of the new influence, — the 
rationalistic spirit, the stringent classicism, the re- 
striction of art to the imitation of nature, with the 
further limitation of nature to the life of the city 
and the court, and the confinement of the imagi- 
nation to what is called "wit." This specialized 
sense of the word "wit" is characteristic of the 
new age, of which Dryden, in part the disciple of 
Davenant, is the leading figure. The Elizabethans 
used the term in the general sense of the under- 
standing, — wit, the mental faculty, as opposed to 
will, the faculty of volition. With the neo-classi- 
cists it was used sometimes to represent, in a lim- 
ited sense, the imagination,^ more often, however, 
to designate what we should call fancy ,^ or even 
mere propriety of poetic expression ; ^ but what- 
ever its particular use, it was always regarded as 
of the essence of poetic art. 

With the fifth stage of English criticism this 
essay is not concerned. The history of literary 
criticism in England will be traced no farther than 
1650, when the influence of Erance was substituted 

1 Cf. Dryden, ded. epist. to the Annus Mirabilis, 

2 Addison, Spectator, no. 62. 

3 Dryden, preface to the State of Innocence. 



•/ 



260 LITEUAKY CRITICISM IN ENGLAND [cHAr. i. 

for that of Italy. This section deals especially 
with the two great periods of Italian influencej — 
that of Sidney and that of Ben Jonson. These 
two men are the central figures, and their names, 
like those of Dryden, Pope, and Samuel Johnson, 
represent distinct and important epochs in the 
history of literary criticism. 



CHAPTER II 

THE GENERAL THEORY OP POETRY IN THE 
ELIZABETHAN AGE 

Those who have some acquaintance, however 
superficial, with the literary criticism of the Italian . 
Renaissance will find an account of the Elizabethan 
theory of poetry a twice-told tale. In England, as 
in France, criticism during this period was of a 
more practical character than in Italy; but even 
for the technical questions discussed by the Eliza- 
bethans, some prototype, or at least some equiva- 
lent, may be found among the Italians. The first 
four stages of English criticism have therefore little 
novelty or original value ; and their study is chiefly 
important as evidence of the gradual application of 
the ideas of the Renaissance to English literature. 

The writers of the first stage, as might be ex- 
pected, concerned themselves but little with the 
theory of poetry, beyond repeating here and there 
the commonplaces they found in the Italian rheto- 
ricians. Yet it is interesting to note that as early 
as 1553, Wilson, in the third book of his Rhetoric, 
gives expression to the allegorical conception of 
poetry which in Italy had held sway from the time 
of Petrarch and Boccaccio, and which, more than 
anything else, colored critical theory in Elizabethan 
261 



262 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ENGLAND [chap. 

England. The ancient poets, according to Wilson, 
did not spend their time inventing meaningless 
fables, but used the story merely as a framework 
for contents of ethical, philosophic, scientific, or 
historical import; the trials of Ulysses, for ex- 
ample, were intended to furnish a lively picture 
of man's misery in this life. The poets are, in 
fact, wise men, spiritual legislators, reformers, who 
have at heart the redressing of wrongs; and in 
accomplishing this end, — either because they fear 
to rebuke these wrongs openly, or beca^use they 
doubt the expediency or efficacy of such frankness 
with ignorant people, — they hide their true mean- 
ing under the veil of pleasant fables. This theory 
of poetic art, one of the commonplaces of the age, 
may be described as the great legacy of the Middle 
Ages to Renaissance criticism. 

The writers of the second stage were, in many 
cases, too busy with questions of versification and 
other practical matters to find time for abstract 
theorizing on the art of poetry. A long period of 
rhetorical and metrical study had helped to formu- 
late a rhetorical and technical conception of the 
poet's function, aptly exemplified in the sonnet 
describing the perfect poet prefixed to King 
James's brief treatise on Scotch poetry.^ The 
marks of a perfect poet are there given as skilful- 
ness in the rhetorical figures, quick wit, as shown 
in the use of apt and pithy words, and a good mem- 
ory; — a merely external view of the poet's gifts, 
which takes no account of such essentials as imag- 
1 Haslewood, ii. 103. 



II.] THE GENERAL THEORY OE POETRY 263 

ination, sensibility, and knowledge of nature and 
human life. 

Webbe's Discourse of English Poetrie (1586) gives 
expression to a conception of tbe object of poetry 
wMcli is the logical consequence of the allegorical 
theory, and which was therefore almost universally 
accepted by Eenaissance writers. The poet teaches 
by means of the allegorical truth hidden under the 
pleasing fables he invents ; but his first object must 
be to make these fables really pleasing, or the 
reader is deterred at the outset from any acquaint- 
ance with the poet's works. Poetry is therefore a 
delightful form of instruction ; it pleases and profits 
together ; but first of all it must delight, " for the 
very sum and chiefest essence of poetry did always 
for the most part consist in delighting the readers 
or hearers." ^ The poet has the highest welfare of 
man at heart; and by his sweet allurements to 
virtue and effective caveats against vice, he gains 
his end, not roughly or tyrannically, but, as it 
were, with a loving authority.^ From the very be- 
ginnings of human society poetry has been the 
means of civilizing men, of drawing them from 
barbarity to civility and virtue. If it be objected 
that this art — or rather, from the divine origin of 
its inspiration, this more than art — has ever been 
made the excuse for the enticing expression of ob- 
scenity and blasphemy, Webbe has three answers. 
In the first place, poetry is to be moralized, that is, 
to be read allegorically. The Metamorphoses of 
Ovid, for example, will become, when so understood, 
1 Haslewood. ii. 28. 2 i^ia. ii. 42. 



264 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ENGLAND [chap. 

a fount of ethical teaching ; and Harington, a few 
years later, actually explains in detail the allegorical 
significance of the fourth book of that poem.^ This 
was a well-established tradition, and indeed a favo- 
rite occupation, of the Middle Ages ; audthe Ovide 
Moralise, a long poem by Chretien Le Gouais, 
written about the beginning of the fourteenth cen- 
tury, and the equally long Ovidian commentary of 
Pierre BerQuire, are typical examples of this prac- 
tice.^ In the second place, the picture of vices to 
be found in poetry is intended, not to entice the 
reader to imitate them, but rather to deter sensible 
men from doing likewise by showing the misfor- 
tune that inevitably results from evil. Moreover, 
obscenity is in no way essentially connected with 
poetic art ; it is to the abuse of poetry, and not to 
poetry itself, that we must lay aJl blame for this 
fault. 

A still higher conception of the poet's function is 
to be found in Puttenham's Arte of English Poesie 
(1589). The author of this treatise informs us 
that he had lived at the courts of France, Italy, and 
Spain, and knew the languages of these and other 
lands; and the results of his travels and studies 
are sufficiently shown in his general theory of 
poetry. His conception of the poet is directly 
based on that of Scaliger. Poetry, in its highest 
form, is an art of " making," or creation ; and in 
this sense the poet is a creator like God, and forms 
a world out of nothing. In another sense, poetry 

1 Haslewood, ii. 128. 

2 Hist. Lett, de la France, xxix. 502-525. 



II.] THE GENEKAL THEORY OF POETRY 265 

is an art of imitation, in that it presents a true and 
lively picture of everything set before it. In either 
case, it can attain perfection only by a divine in- 
stinct, or by a great excellence of nature, or by 
vast observation and experience of the world, or 
indeed by all these together ; but whatever the source 
of its inspiration, it is ever worthy of study and 
praise, and its creators deserve preeminence and 
dignity above all other artificers, scientific or me- 
chanical.^ The poets were the first priests, prophets, 
and legislators of the world, the first philosophers, 
scientists, orators, historians, and musicians. They 
have been held in the highest esteem by the great- 
est men from the very first; and the nobility, 
antiquity, and universality of their art prove its 
preeminence and worth. With such a history and 
such a nature, it is sacrilege to debase poetry, or to 
employ it upon any unworthy subject or for ignoble 
purpose. Its chief themes should therefore be such 
as these : the honor and glory of the gods, the 
worthy deeds of noble princes and great warriors, 
the praise of virtue and the reproof of vice, instruc- 
tion in moral doctrine or scientific knowledge, and 
finally, " the common solace of mankind in all the 
travails and cares of this transitory life," or even 
for mere recreation alone.^ 

This is the sum of poetic theorizing during the 
second stage of English criticism. Yet it was at 
this very time that the third, or apologetic, period 
was prepared for by the attacks which the Puritans 
directed against poetry, and especially the drama. 
1 Puttenham, p. 19 sq. 2 Ujia. p. 39. 



266 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ENGLAND [chap. 

Of these attacks, Gosson's, as the most celebrated, 
may be taken as the tj^e. Underlying the rant 
and exaggerated vituperation of his Schoole of 
Abuse (1579), there is a basis of right principles, 
and some evidence at least of a spirit not wholly 
vulgar. He was a moral reformer, an idealist, who 
looked back with regret toward " the old discipline 
of England," and contrasted it with the spirit of 
his own day, when Englishmen seemed to have 
" robbed Greece of gluttony, Italy of wantonness, 
Spain of pride, France of deceit, and Dutchland 
of quaffing.'*' ^ The typical evidences of this moral 
degradation and effeminacy he found in poetry and 
the drama ; and it is to this motive that his bitter 
assault on both must be ascribed. He specifically 
insists that his intention was not to banish poetry, 
or to condemn music, or to forbid harmless recrea- 
tion to mankind, but merely to chastise the abuse 
of all these.^ He praises plays which possess real 
moral purpose and effect, and points out the true 
use and the worthy subjects of poetry much in the 
same manner as Puttenham does a few years later.^ 
But he affirms, as Plato had done hundreds of years 
before, and as a distinguished French critic has 
done only the other day, that art contains within 
itself the germ of its own disintegration; and he 
shows that in the English poetry of his own time 
this disintegration had already taken place. The 
delights and ornaments of verse, intended really to 
make moral doctrine more pleasing and less abstruse 

1 Gosson, p. 34. 2 /^ieZ. p. 65. 

3 Ibid. pp. 25, 40. 



II.] THE GENERAI. THEORY OF POETRY 267 

and thorny, had become, with his contemporaries, 
mere alluring disguises for obscenity and blas- 
phemy. 

In the first of the replies to Gosson, Lodge's De- 
fence of Poetry, Musick, and Stage Plays, written 
before either of the treatises of Webbe and Putten- 
ham, are found the old principles of allegorical and 
moral interpretation, — principles which to us may 
seem well worn, but which to the English criticism 
of that time were novel enough. Lodge points out 
the efficacy of poetry as a civilizing factor in primi- 
tive times, and as a moral agency ever since. If the 
poets have on occasion erred, so have the philoso- 
phers, even Plato himself, and grievously.^ Poetry 
is a heavenly gift, and is to be contemned only 
when abused and debased. Lodge did not perceive 
that his point of view was substantially the same 
as his opponent's; and indeed, throughout the 
Elizabethan age, there was this similarity in the 
point of view of those who attacked and those who 
defended poetry. Both sides admitted that not 
poetry, but its abuse, is to be disparaged ; and they 
differed chiefly in that one side insisted almost 
entirely on the ideal perfection of the poetic art, 
while the other laid stress on the debased state into 
which it had fallen. A dual point of view was 
attempted in a work, licensed in January, 1600, 
which professed to be "a commendation of true 
poetry, and a discommendation of all bawdy, ribald, 
and paganized poets." ^ This Puritan movement 

1 Lodge, Defence {Shakespeare Soc. PubL), p. 6. 

2 Arber, Transcript of the Stat. Reg., iii. 154. 



268 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ENGLAND [chap. 

against the paganization of poetry corresponds to 
the similar movement started by the Council of 
Trent in Catholic countries. 

The theory of poetry during the second stage of 
English criticism was in the main Horatian, with 
such additions and modifications as the early 
Eenaissance had derived from the Middle Ages. 
The Aristotelian canons had not yet become a part 
of English criticism. Webbe alludes to Aristotle's 
dictum that Empedocles, having naught but metre 
in common with Homer, was in reality a natural 
philosopher rather than a poet ; ^ but all such allu- 
sions to Aristotle's Poetics were merely incidental 
and sporadic. The introduction of Aristotelianism 
into England was the direct result of the influence 
of the Italian critics; and the agent in bringing 
this new influence into English letters was Sir 
Philip Sidney. His Defence of Poesy is a veritable 
epitome of the literary criticism of the Italian 
Eenaissance ; and so thoroughly is it imbued with 
this spirit, that no other work, Italian, French, or 
English, can be said to give so complete and so 
noble a conception of the temper and the principles 
of Eenaissance criticism. For the general theory 
of poetry, its sources were the critical treatises of 
Minturno ^ and Scaliger.^ Yet without any decided 
novelty of ideas, or even of expression, it can lay 

1 Haslewood, ii. 28. 

2 Sidney's acquaintance with Minturno is proved beyond 
doubt, even were such proof necessary, by the list of poets 
{Defence, pp. 2, 3) which he has copied from Minturno's De 
Foeta, pp. 14, 15. 

8 Scaliger's Poetics is specifically mentioned and cited by 



II.] THE GENERAL THEORY OF POETRY 269 

claim to distinct originality in its unity of feeling, 
its ideal and noble temper, and its adaptation to 
circumstance. Its eloquence and dignity will hardly 
appear in a mere analysis, which pretends to give 
only the more important and fundamental of its 
principles ; but such a summary — and this is quite 
as important — will at least indicate the extent of 
its indebtedness to Italian criticism. 

In all that relates to the antiquity, universality, 
and preeminence of poetry, Sidney apparently fol- 
lows Minturno. Poetry, as the first light-giver to 
ignorance, flourished before any other art or science. 
The first philosophers and historians were poets ; 
and such supreme works as the Psalms of David 
and the Dialogues of Plato are in reality poetical. 
Among the Greeks and the Eomans, the poet was 
regarded as a sage or prophet ; and no nation, how- 
ever primitive or barbarous, has been without poets, 
or has failed to receive delight and instruction from 
poetry.^ 

But before proceeding to defend an art so ancient 
and universal, it is necessary to define it ; and the 
definition which Sidney gives agrees substantially 
with what might be designated Kenaissance Aris- 
totelianism. ^^ Poetry," says Sidney,^ " is an art of 
imitation, for so Aristotle termeth it in his word 
fiifjirja-Ls, that is to say, a representing, counterfeit- 
ing, or figuring forth; to speak metaphorically, a 



Sidney four or five times; but these citations are far from 
exhausting his indebtedness to Scaliger. 

1 Defence, p. 2 sq. ; cf. Minturno, De Poeta, pp. 9, 13. 

2 Defence, p. 9. 



270 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ENGLAND [chap. 

speaking picture/ with this end, — to teach and 
delight." ^ Poetry is, accordingly, an art of imi- 
tation, and not merely the art of versifying; for 
although most poets have seen fit to apparel their 
poetic inventions in verse, verse is but the raiment 
and ornament of poetry, and not one of its causes 
or essentials.^ "One may be a poet without vers- 
ing," says Sidney, " and a versifier without poetry." ^ 
Speech and reason are the distinguishing features 
between man and brute; and whatever helps to 
perfect and polish speech deserves high commen- 
dation. Besides its mnemonic value, verse is the 
most fitting raiment of poetry because it is most 
dignified and compact, not colloquial and slipshod. 
But with all its merits, it is not an essential of 
poetry, of which the true test is this, — feigning 
notable images of vices and virtues, and teaching 
delightfully. 

In regard to the object, or function, of poetry, 
Sidney is at one with Scaliger. The aim of poetry 
is accomplished by teaching most delightfully a 
notable morality; or, in a word, by delightful in- 
struction.^ Not instruction alone, or delight alone, 

1 This ancient phrase had become, as has been seen, a com- 
monplace during the Renaissance. Cf., e.g., Dolce, Osservationi, 
1560, p. 189 ; Vauquelin, Art Po4t. i. 226 ; Camoens, Lusiad. vii. 70. 

2 Sidney's classification of poets, Defence, p. 9, is borrowed 
from Scaliger, Poet. i. 3. 

3 Defence, p. 11. Cf. Castelvetro, Poetica, pp. 23, 190. 

* Defence, p. 33. Cf. Ronsard, (Euvres, iii. 19, vii. 310; and 
Shelley, Defence of Poetry, p. 9: "The distinction between 
poets and prose writers is a vulgar error." 

5 Defence, pp. 47, 51. Cf. Scaliger, Poet. i. 1, and vii. 1. 2: 
"Poetae finem esse, docere cum delectatione." 



II.] THE GENERAL THEORY OF POETRY 271 

as Horace had said, but instruction made delicrht- 
fulj and it is this dual function which serves not 
only as the end but as the very test of poetry 
The object of all arts and sciences is to lift human 
life to the highest altitudes of perfection; and in 
this respect they are all servants of the sovereign, 
or architectonic, science, whose end is well-doing 
and not well-knowing only.^ Virtuous action is 
therefore the end of all learning j^ and Sidney sets 
out to prove that the poet, more than any one else 
conduces to this end. 

This is the beginning of the apologetic side of 
Sidney's argument. The ancient controversy - 
ancient even in Plato's days - between poetry and 
philosophy is once more reopened ; and the question 
IS the one so often debated by the Italians, — shall 
the palm be given to the poet, to the philosopher, 
or to the historian ? The gist of Sidney's argument 
IS that while the philosopher teaches by precept 
alone, and the historian by example alone, the poet 
conduces most to virtue because he employs both 
precept and example. The philosopher teaches 
virtue by showing what virtue is and what vice is, 
by setting down, in thorny argument, and without 
clarity or^ beauty of style, the bare rule.^ The his- 
torian teaches virtue by showing the experience of 
past ages; but, being tied down to what actually 
happened, that is, to the particular truth of things 

1 Aristotle, Ethics, i. 1; Cicero, De Offie, i. 7. 

2 This was the usual attitude of the humanists; cf. Wood- 
ward, p. 182 sq. 

« Cf. Daniello, p. 19 ; Minturno, De Poeta, p. 39. 



272 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ENGLAND [chap. 

and not to general reason, the example he depicts 
draws no necessary consequence. The poet alone 
accomplishes this dual task. What the philosopher 
says should be done is by the poet pictured most 
perfectly in some one by whom it has been done, 
thus coupling the general notion with the particular 
instance. The philosopher, moreover, teaches the 
learned only ; the poet teaches all, and is, in Plu- 
tarch's phrase, "the right popular philosopher,"^ 
for he seems only to promise delight, and moves 
men to virtue unawares. But even if the philoso- 
pher excel the poet in teaching, he cannot move his 
readers as the poet can, and this is of higher impor- 
tance than teaching ; for what is the use of teaching 
virtue if the pupil is not moved to act and accom- 
plish what he is taught ? ^ On the other hand, the 
historian deals with particular instances, with vices 
and virtues so commingled that the reader can find 
no pattern to imitate. The poet makes history 
reasonable y he gives perfect examples of vices and 
virtues for human imitation; he makes virtue 
succeed and vice fail, as history can but seldom do. 
Poetry, therefore, conduces to virtue, the end of all 
learning, better than any other art or science, and 
so deserves the palm as the highest and the noblest 
form of human wisdom.^ 

The basis of Sidney's distinction between the 

1 Defence, p. 18. 

^Ihid. p. 22. Cf. Minturno, De Foeta, p. 106; Varchi, 
Lezzioni, p. 576. 

3 That is, the highest form of human wisdom, for Sidney, as 
a Christian philosopher, naturally leaves revealed religion out 
of the discussion. 



"•] THE GENERAL THEORY OF POETRY 273 

poet and the historian is the famous passage in 
which Anstotle explains why poetry is LI 1" 
osophic and of more serious value than history ■ 
The poet deals not with the particular, but with the 
universal, wifl, what might or should be, not with 
what :s or has been. But Sidney, in the assertion 
of thrs principle, follows Minturno^and Scaliger = 
and goes farther than Aristotle would probS 
have gone All arts have the works of nature ^ 
Heir principal object, and follow nature as Tctor 

not tied to such subjects, but creates another nature 
better than ever nature itself brought forth. Por 
going hand in hand with nature, and being enclosed 
not within her limits, but only by the .odiac o S 
own imagination, he creates a golden world for 
na ure's brazen; and in this sense he may be com- 
pared as a creator with God.^ Where shall you 
find in life such a friend as Pylades, such a hero as 
Orlando, such an excellent man as ^neas ' 

Sidney then proceeds to answer the various ob- 
jections that have been made against poetry. These 
objections, partly following Gosson and Cornelius 
Agrippa,» and partly his own inclinations, he re 

that a man might spend his time more profitably 
than by reading the figments of poets. But since 
teaching virtue is the real aim of all learning, and 
since poetry has been shown to accomplish this 

■Poe<^ix.l-4. ^Defence, pp. 7, 8. 

■^*'*'-'-^- ^ defence, p. Si sq. 



274 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ENGLAND [chap. 

better tlian all other arts or sciences, this objection 
is easily answered. In the second place, poetry has 
been called the mother of lies ; but Sidney shows 
that it is less likely to misstate facts than other 
sciences, for the poet does not publish his figments 
as facts, and, since he affirms nothing, cannot ever 
be said to lie.^ Thirdly, poetry has been called the 
nurse of abuse, that is to say, poetry misuses and 
debases the mind of man by turning it to wanton- 
ness and by making it unmartial and effeminate. 
But Sidney argues that it is man's wit that abuses 
poetry, and not poetry that abuses man's wit ; and as 
to making men effeminate, this charge applies to all 
other sciences more than to poetry, which in its 
description of battles and praise of valiant men 
notably stirs courage and enthusiasm. Lastly, it 
is pointed out by the enemies of poetry that Plato, 
one of the greatest of philosophers, banished poets 
from his ideal commonwealth. But Plato's Dior 
logues are in reality themselves a form of poetry ; 
and it argues ingratitude in the most poetical of 
philosophers, that he should defile the fountain 
which was his source.^ Yet though Sidney perceives 
how fundamental are Plato's objections to poetry, 
he is inclined to believe that it was rather against 
the abuse of poetry by the contemporary Greek 
poets that Plato was chiefly cavilling ; for poets are 
praised in the Ion, and the greatest men of every 
age have been patrons and lovers of poetry. 

1 Cf. Boccaccio, Gen. degli Dei, p. 257 sq. ; and Haslewood, 
ii. 127. 

2 Defence^ pp. 3, 41 ; cf. Daniello, p. 22. 



II.] THE GENERAL THEORY OF POETRY 275 

In the dozen years or so whicli elapsed between 
the composition and the publication of the Defence 
of Poesy, during which time it seems to have circu- 
lated in manuscript, a number of critical works ap- 
peared, and the indebtedness of several of them to 
Sidney's book is considerable. This is especially 
so of the Apologie of Poetrie which Sir John Har- 
ington prefixed to his translation of the Orlando 
Furioso in 1591. This brief treatise includes an 
apology for poetry in general, for the Orlando 
Furioso in particular, and also for his own transla- 
tion. The first section, which alone concerns us 
here, is almost entirely based on the Defence of 
Poesy. The distinguishing features of poetry are 
imitation, or fiction, and verse.^ Harington dis- 
claims all intention of discussing whether writers 
of fiction and dialogue in prose, such as Plato and 
Xenophon, are poets or not, or whether Lucan, 
though writing in verse, is to be regarded as an 
historiographer rather than as a poet ; ^ so that his 
argument is confined to the element of imitation, 
or fiction. He treats poetry rather as a propaedeutic 
to theology and moral philosophy than as one of the 
fine arts. All human learning may be regarded by 
the orthodox Christian as vain and superfluous ; 
but poetry is one of the most effective aids to the 
higher learning of God's divinity, and poets them- 
selves are really popular philosophers and popular 
divines. Harington then takes up, one by one, the 
four specific charges of Cornelius Agrippa, that 
poetry is a nurse of lies, a pleaser of fools, a 
1 Haslewood, ii. 129. « Ibid, ii, 123. 



276 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ENGLAND [chap. 

breeder of dangerous errors, and an enticer to wan- 
tonness ; and answers them after the manner of 
Sidney. He differs from Sidney, however, in lay- 
ing particular stress on the allegorical interpretation 
of imaginative literature. This element is mini- 
mized in the Defence of Poesy ; but Harington 
accepts, and discusses in detail, the mediaeval con- 
ception of the three meanings of poetry, the literal, 
the moral, and the allegorical.^ The death-knell of 
this mode of interpreting literature was sounded by 
Bacon, who, while not asserting that all the fables 
of poets are but meaningless fictions, declared with- 
out hesitation that the fable had been more often 
written first and the exposition devised afterward, 
than the moral first conceived and the fable merely 
framed to give expression to it.- 

This passage occurs in the second book of the 
Advancement of Learning (1605), where Bacon has 
briefly stated his theory of poetry. His point of 
view does not differ essentially from that of Sidney, 
though the expression is more compact and logical. 
The human understanding, according to Bacon, in- 
cludes the three faculties of memory, imagination, 
and reason, and each of these faculties finds typi- 
cal expression in one of the three great branches of 
learning, memory in history, reason in philosophy, 
and imagination in poetry.^ The imagination, not 
being tied to the laws of matter, may join what 
nature has severed and sever what nature has joined ; 
and poetry, therefore, while restrained in the meas- 

1 Haslewood, ii. 127. 2 Bacon, Works, vi. 204-206. 

3 Cf. Anglia, 1899, xxi. 273. 



II.] THE GENERAL THEORY OF POETRY 277 

ure of wordsj is in all things else extremely licensed. 
It may be defined as feigned history, and in so far 
as its form is concerned, may be either in prose or 
in verse. Its source is to be found in the dissatis- 
faction of the human mind with the actual world ; 
and its purpose is to satisfy man's natural longing 
for more perfect greatness, goodness, and variety 
than can be found in the nature of things. Poetry 
therefore invents actions and incidents greater and 
more heroic than those of nature, and hence con- 
duces to magnanimity; it invents actions more 
agreeable to the merits of virtue and vice, more 
just in retribution, more in accordance with re- 
vealed providence, and hence conduces to moral- 
ity ; it invents actions more varied and unexpected, 
and hence conduces to delectation. "And there- 
fore it was ever thought to have some participa- 
tion of divineness, because it doth raise the mind, 
by submitting the shows of things to the desires 
of the mind; whereas reason doth buckle and 
bow the mind unto the nature of things." ^ For 
the expression of affections, passions, corruptions, 
and customs^ the world is more indebted to 
poets than to the works of philosophers, and for 
wit and eloquence no less than to orators and their 
orations. It is for these reasons that in rude times, 
when all other learning was excluded, poetry alone 
found access and admiration. 

This is pure idealism of a romantic type; but in 
his remarks on allegory Bacon was foreshadowing 
the development of classicism, for from the time of 
1 Works, vi. 203. 



278 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ENGLAND [chap. 

Ben Jonsoii the allegorical mode of interpreting 
poetry ceased to have any effect on literary criti- 
cism. The reason for this is obvious. The alle- 
gorical critics regarded the plot, or fable, — to use 
a simile so often found in E-enaissance criticism — 
as a mere sweet and pleasant covering for the 
wholesome but bitter pill of moral doctrine. The 
neo-classicists, limiting the sense and application of 
Aristotle's definition of poetry as an imitation of 
life, regarded the fable as the medium of this imi- 
tation, and the more perfect according as it became 
more truly and more minutely an image of human 
life. In criticism, therefore, the growth of classi- 
cism is more or less coextensive with the growth 
of the conception of the fable, or plot, as an end in 
itself. 

This vaguely defines the change which comes 
over the spirit of criticism about the beginning of 
the seventeenth century, and which is exemplified 
in the writings of Ben Jonson. His definition of 
poetry does not differ substantially from that of 
Sidney, but seems more directly Aristotelian : — 

" A poet, j)oeia, is ... a maker, or feigner ; his art, an 
art of imitation or feigning ; expressing the life of men in fit 
measure, numbers, and harmony ; according to Aristotle 
from the word iroieTv, which signifies to make or feign. 
Hence he is called a poet, not he which writeth in measure 
only, but that feigneth and formeth a fable, and writes 
things like the truth ; for the fable and fiction is, as it were, 
the form and soul of any poetical work or poem." i 

1 Discoveries, p. 73. On Jonson' s distinction between poet 
(poeta), poem (poema), and poesy (poesis), see my article in 
Modern Philology, 1905, ii. 459, n. 



II.] THE GENERAL THEORY OF POETRY 279 

Poetry and painting agree in that both are arts of 
imitation, both accommodate all they invent to the 
use and service of nature, and both have as their 
common object profit and pleasure ; but poetry is a 
higher form of art than painting, since it appeals 
to the understanding, while painting appeals pri- 
marily to the senses.^ Jonson's conception of his art 
is thus essentially noble ; of all arts it ranks high- 
est in dignity and ethical importance. It contains 
all that is best in philosophy, divinity, and the 
science of politics, and leads and persuades men to 
virtue with a ravishing delight, while the others 
but threaten and compel.^ It therefore offers to 
mankind a certain rule and pattern of living well 
and happily in human society. This conception of 
poetry Jonson finds in Aristotle ; ^ but it is to the 
Italians of the Renaissance, and not to the Stagy- 
rite, that these doctrines really belong. 

Jonson ascribes to the poet himself a dignity no 
less than that of his craft. Mere excellence in style 
or versification does not make a poet, but rather the 
exact knowledge of vices and virtues, with ability 
to make the latter loved and the former hated; ^ 
and this is so far true, that to be a good poet it is 
necessary, first of all, to be a really good man.^ A 
similar doctrine has already been found in many 
critical writers of the sixteenth century ; but per- 
haps the noblest expression of this conception of 
the poet's consecrated character and office occurs in 

1 Discoveries, p. 49. ^ Ibid. p. 74. 

2 Ibid. p. 34. 4 jjjia. p. 34. 

5 Works, i. 333. 



280 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ENGLAND [chap. 

the original quarto edition of Jonson's Every Man 
in Ms Humour, in whicli the " reverend name " of 
poet is thus exalted : — 

" I can refell opinion, and approve 
The state of poesy, such as it is, 
Blessed, eternal, and most true divine : 
Indeed, if you will look on poesy, 
As she appears in many, poor and lame, 
Patched up in remnants and old worn-out rags, 
Half-starved for want of her peculiar food, 
Sacred invention ; then I must confirm 
Both your conceit and censure of her merit : 
But view her in her glorious ornaments. 
Attired in the majesty of art, 
Set high in spirit with the precious taste 
Of sweet philosophy ; and, which is most, 
Crowned with the rich traditions of a soul, 
That hates to have her dignity prophaned 
With any relish of an earthly thought. 
Oh then how proud a presence doth she bear I 
Then is she like herself, fit to be seen 
Of none but grave and consecrated eyes." i 

Milton also gives expression to this consecrated 
conception of the poet. Poetry is a gift granted by- 
God only to a few in every nation ; ^ but he who 
would partake of the gift of eloquence must first of 
all be virtuous.^ It is impossible for any one to 
write well of laudable things without being himself 
a true poem, without having in himself the experi- 
ence and practice of all that is praiseworthy.* 
Poets are the champions of liberty and the " strenu- 

1 Works, i. 59, n. 3 jua. iii. 100. 

2 Milton, Prose Works, ii. 479. > * Ibid. iii. 118. 



II.] THE GENEEAL THEORY OF POETRY 281 

ous enemies of despotism " ; ^ and they have power 
to imbreed and cherish in a people the seeds of 
virtue and public civility, to set the affections in 
right tune, and to allay the perturbations of the 
mind.^ Poetry, which at its best is " simple, sen- 
suous, and passionate," describes everything that 
passes through the brain of man, — all that is holy 
and sublime in religion, all that in virtue is amiable 
and grave. Thus by means of delight and the 
force of example, those who would otherwise flee 
from virtue are taught to love her. 

1 Prose Works, i. 241. 2 jj^ici, a, 479. 



CHAPTER III 

THE THEORY OF DKAMATIC AND HEROIC POETRY 

Dramatic criticism in England began with Sir 
Philip Sidney. Casual references to the drama 
can be found in critical writings anterior to the 
Defence of Poesy ; but to Sidney belongs the credit 
of having first formulated, in a more or less sys- 
tematic manner, the general principles of dramatic 
art. These principles, it need hardly be said, are 
those which, for half a century or more, had been 
undergoing discussion and modification in Italy and 
France, and of which the ultimate source was the 
Poetics of Aristotle. Dramatic criticism in Eng- 
land was thus, from its very birth, both Aristotelian 
and classical, and it remained so for two centuries. 
The beginnings of the Elizabethan drama were 
almost contemporary with the composition of the 
Defence of Poesy, and the decay of the drama 
with Jonson's Discoveries. Yet throughout this 
period the romantic drama never received literary 
exposition. The great Spanish drama had its criti- 
cal champions and defenders, the Elizabethan drama 
had none. It was, perhaps, found to be a simpler 
task to echo the doctrines of others, than to formu- 
late the principles of a novel dramatic form. But 
the true explanation has already been suggested. 
282 



CHAP. III.] DEAMATIC AND HEROIC POETRY 283 

The sources of the dramatic criticism were the 
writings of the Italian critics, and these were en- 
tirely classical. In creative literature, however, 
the Italian Eenaissance influenced the Elizabeth- 
ans almost entirely on the romantic side. This, 
perhaps, suffices to explain the lack of fundamen- 
tal coordination between dramatic theory and dra- 
matic practice during the sixteenth and early 
seventeenth centuries. Ascham, writing twenty 
years before Sidney, indicated ^^Aristotle's pre- 
cepts and Euripides' example " as the criteria of 
dramatic art ; ^ and in spirit these remained the 
final tests throughout the Elizabethan age. 

I. Tragedy 

In Webbe's Discourse of English Poetrie we find 
those general distinctions between tragedy and 
comedy which had been common throughout the 
Middle Ages from the days of the post-classic 
grammarians. Tragedies express sorrowful and 
lamentable histories, dealing with gods and god- 
desses, kings and queens, and men of high estate, 
and representing miserable calamities, which be- 
come worse and worse until they end in the most 
woful plight that can be devised. Comedies, on 
the other hand, begin doubtfully, become troubled 
for a while, but always, by some lucky chance, end 
"with the joy and appeasement of all concerned.^ 
This distinction is said to be derived from imitation 
of the Iliad and the Odyssey; and in this, as well in 
1 Scholemaster, p. 139. 2 Haslewood, ii. 40. 



284 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ENGLAND [chap. 

his fanciful account of the origins of the drama, 
Webbe seems to have had a vague recollection of 
Aristotle. Puttenham's account of dramatic devel- 
opment is scarcely more Aristotelian ; ^ yet in its gen- 
eral conclusions it agrees with those in the Poetics. 
His conception of tragedy and comedy is similar 
to Webbe's. Comedy expresses the common be- 
havior and manner of life of private persons, and 
such as are of the meaner sort of men.^ Tragedy 
deals with the doleful falls of unfortunate and 
afilicted princes, for the purpose of reminding men 
of the mutability of fortune, and of God's just pun- 
ishment of a vicious life.^ 

The Senecan drama and the Aristotelian precepts 
were the sources of Sidney's theory of tragedy. 
The oratorical and sententious tragedies of Seneca 
had influenced dramatic theory and practice through- 
out Europe from the very outset of the Kenaissance. 
Ascham, indeed, preferred Sophocles and Euripi- 
■des to Seneca, and cited Pigna, the rival of Giraldi 
Cintio, in confirmation of his opinion;^ but this, 
while an indication of Ascham's own good taste, is 
an exceptional verdict, and in direct opposition to 
the usual opinion of contemporary critics. Sidney, 
in his account of the English drama, could find but 
one tragedy modelled as it should be on the Sene- 
can drama.^ The tragedy of Gorboduc, however, 
has one defect that provokes Sidney's censure, — 
it does not observe the unities of time and place. 

1 Puttenham, p. 47 sg. ' Ibid. p. 49. 

2 Ibid. p. 41. •* Ascham, Works, ii. 189. 

5 Defence, p. 47 sq. 



III.] DRAMATIC AND HEROIC POETRY 285 

In all other respects, it is an ideal model for Eng- 
lish playwrights to imitate. Its stately speeches 
and well-sounding phrases approach almost to the 
height of Seneca's style ; and in teaching most de- 
lightfully a notable morality, it attains the very 
end of poetry. 

The ideal tragedy — and in this Sidney closely 
follows the Italians — is an imitation of a noble 
action, in the representation of which it stirs " ad- 
miration and commiseration,''^ and teaches the 
uncertainty of the world and the weak foundations 
upon which golden roofs are built. It makes kings 
fear to be tyrants, and tyrants manifest their tyran- 
nical humors. Sidney's censure of the contempo- 
rary drama is that it outrages the grave and weighty 
character of tragedy, its elevated style, and the 
dignity of the personages represented, by mingling 
kings and clowns, and introducing the most inap- 
propriate buffoonery. There are, indeed, one or 
two examples of tragi-comedy in ancient literature, 
such as Plautus's Amphitryon;^ but never do the 
ancients, like the English, match hornpipes and 
funerals.^ The English dramas are neither true 
comedies nor true tragedies, and disregard both 
the rules of poetry and honest civility. Tragedy 
is not tied to the laws of history, and may arrange 
and modify events as it pleases ; but it is certainly 
bound by the rules of poetry: It is evident, there- 

1 Defence, p. 28. This is the Elizabethan equivalent for Aris- 
totle's katharsis of " pity and terror." 

2 cf. Scaliger, Poet. i. 7. * , ^ 
8 Defence, p. 50. 



286 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ENGLAND [chap. 

fore, tliat the Defence of Poesy, as a French writer 
has observed, " gives us an almost complete theory 
of neo-classic tragedy, a hundred years before the 
Art Poetique of Boileau : the severe separation of 
poetic forms, the sustained dignity of language, the 
unities, the tirade, the recit, nothing is lacking." ^ 

Ben Jonson pays more attention to the theory of 
comedy than to that of tragedy ; but his conception 
of the latter does not differ from Sidney's. The 
parts, or divisions, of comedy and tragedy are the 
same, and both have on the whole a common end, 
to teach and delight; so that comic as well as 
tragic poets were called by the Greeks StSao-KaXot.^ 
The external conditions of the drama require that 
it should have the equal division into acts and 
scenes, the true number of actors, the chorus, and 
the unities.^ But Jonson does not insist on the 
strict observance of these formal requirements, for 
the history of the drama shows that each succes- 
sive poet of importance has gradually and ma- 
terially altered the dramatic structure, and there is 
no reason why the modern poet may not do like- 
wise. Moreover, while these requirements may 
have been regularly observed in the ancient state 
and splendor of dramatic poetry, it is impossible to 
retain them now and preserve any measure of pop- 
ular delight. The outward forms of the ancients, 
therefore, may in part be disregarded ; but there are 
certain essentials which must be observed by the 
tragic poet in whatsoever age he may flourish. 
These are, " Truth of argument, dignity of persons, 

1 Breitinger, p. 37. * Discoveries, p. 81. 3 Works, i. 69. 



III.] DRAMATIC AND HEROIC POETRY 287 

gravity and height of elocution, fulness and fre- 
quency of sentence." ^ In other words, Jonson's 
model is the oratorical and sententious tragedy of 
Seneca, with its historical plots and its persons of 
high estate. 

In the address, " Of that Sort of Dramatic Poem 
which is called Tragedy," prefixed to Samson 
Agonistes, Milton has minutely adhered to the Ital- 
ian theory of tragedy. After referring to the 
ancient dignity and moral effect of tragedy,^ Milton 
acknowledges that, in the modelling of his poem, 
he has followed the ancients and the Italians as of 
greatest authority in such matters. He has avoided 
the introduction of trivial and vulgar persons and 
the intermingling of comic and tragic elements; 
he has used the chorus, and has observed the laws 
of verisimilitude and decorum. His explanation of 
the peculiar effect of tragedy — the purgation of 
pity and fear — has already been referred to in the 
first section of this essay.^ 

II. Comedy 

The Elizabethan theory of comedy was based on 
the body of rules and observations which the Ital- 
ian critics, aided by a few hints from Aristotle, had 
deduced from the practice of Plautus and Terence. 

1 Works, i. 272. 

2 Cf. Bacon, De Augm. Scient. iii. 13; and Ascham, Schole- 
master, p. 130. 

3 He seems also to allude to the theory of katharsis in the 
Reason of Church Government ; Prose Works, ii. 479. 



288 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ENGLAND [chap. 

It will, therefore, be unnecessary to dwell at any- 
great length on the doctrines of Sidney and Ben 
Jonson, Yih.0 are the main comic theorists of this 
period. Sidney defines comedy as "an imitation 
of the common errors of our life," which are repre- 
sented in the most ridiculous and scornful manner, 
so that the spectator is anxious to avoid such errors 
himself. Comedy, therefore, shows the " filthiness 
of evil," but only in "our private and domestical 
matters." ^ It should aim at being wholly delight- 
ful, just as tragedy should be maintained by a 
well-raised admiration. Delight is thus the first 
requirement of comedy; but the English comic 
writers err in thinking that delight cannot be ob- 
tained without laughter, Avhereas laughter is neither 
an essential cause nor an essential effect of delight. 
Sidney then distinguishes delight from laughter 
almost exactly after the manner of Trissino.^ The 
great fault of English comedy is that it stirs 
laughter concerning things that are sinful, i.e. 
execrable rather than merely ridiculous — forbid- 
den plainly, according to Sidney, by Aristotle him- 
self — and concerning things that are miserable, 
and rather to be pitied than scorned. Comedy 
should not only produce delightful laughter, but 
mixed with it that delightful teaching which is the 
end of all poetry. 

Ben Jonson, like Sidney, makes human follies or 
errors the themes of comedy, which should be 

1 Defence, p. 28. 

2 Ibid. p. 50 sq. Cf. Trissino, Opere, ii. 127 sq.; and Cicero, 
De Oral. ii. 58 sq. 



III.] DRAMATIC AND HEROIC POETRY 289 

" an image of the times, 
And sport with human follies, not with crimes, 
Except we make them such, by loving still 
Our popular errors, when we know they're ill ; 
I mean such errors as you'll all confess 
By laughing at them, they deserve no less." i 

In depicting these human follies, it is the office 
of the comic poet to imitate justice, to improve the 
moral life and purify language, and to stir up gentle 
affections.^ The moving of mere laughter is not 
always the end of comedy ; in fact, Jonson inter- 
prets Aristotle as asserting that the moving of 
laughter is a fault in comedy, a kind of turpitude 
that depraves a part of man's nature.^ This con- 
clusion is based on an interpretation of Aristotle 
which has persisted almost to the present day. In 
the Poetics, to yeXolov, the ludicrous, is said to be 
the subject of comedy;^ and many critics have 
thought that Aristotle intended by this to distin- 
guish between the risible and the ridiculous, be- 
tween mere laughter and laughter mixed with 
contempt or disapprobation.^ The nature and the 
source of one of the most important elements in 
Jonson's theory of comedy, his doctrine of " hu- 
mours,'' have been briefly discussed in the first 
section of this essay. It will suffice here to define 
a " humour " as an absorbing singularity of char- 
acter,^ and to note that it grew out of the concep- 

1 Works, i. 2. ' Discoveries, p. 82. 

2 lUd. i. 335. * Poet. v. 1. 

6 Gf. Twining, i. 320 sq., and Kames, Elements of Criticism, 
vol. i. chap. 7. 

« Cf. Jonson, Works, i. 67 and 31. 
u 



290 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ENGLAND [chap. 

tion of decorum wliich. played so important a part 
in poetic theory during the Italian Eenaissance. 



III. The Dramatic Unities 

Before leaving the theory of the drama, there is one 
further point to be discussed, — the doctrine of the 
unities. It has been seen that the unities of time 
and place were, in Italy, first formulated together 
by Castelvetro in 1570, and in France by Jean de la 
Taille in 1572. The first mention of the unities in 
England is to be found, a dozen years later, in the 
Defence of Poesy, and it cannot be doubted that Sid- 
ney derived them directly from Castelvetro. Sid- 
ney, in discussing the tragedy of Oorhoduc, finds it 
" faulty in time and place, the two necessary com- 
panions of all corporal actions ; for where the stage 
should always represent but one place, and the 
uttermost time presupposed in it should be, both 
by Aristotle^s precept and common reason, but one 
day, there [i.e. in Gorhoduc'] is both many days and 
many places inartificially imagined." ^ He also ob- 
jects to the confusions of the English stage, where 
on one side Africa and on the other Asia may be 
represented, and where in an hour a youth may grow 
from boyhood to old age.^ How absurd this is, 
common sense, art, and ancient . examples ought to 

1 Defence, p. 48; cf. Castelvetro, Poetica, pp. 168, 534. 

2 Cf. Whetstone, Promos and Cassandra (1578) , cited in Ward, 
Dram. Lit. i. 118; also, Jonson, Works, i. 2, 70; Cervantes, 
Don Quiz. i. 48; Boileau, Art Podt. iii. 39. In the theory of the 
drama, Sidney's point of view coincides very closely with that 
of Cervantes. 



III.] DRAMATIC AND HEROIC POETRY 291 

teacli the English playwright ; and at this day, says 
Sidney, the ordinary jjlayers in Italy will not err in 
it. If indeed it be objected that one or two of the 
comedies of Plautus and Terence do not observe the 
unity of time, let us not follow them when they err 
but when they are right ; it is no excuse for us to 
do wrong because Plautus on one occasion has done 
likewise. 

The law of the unities does not receive such rigid 
application in England as is given by Sidney until 
the introduction of the Erench influence nearly three 
quarters of a century later. Ben Jonson is con- 
siderably less stringent in this respect than Sidney. 
He lays particular stress on the unity of action, 
and in the Discoveries explains at length the Aris- 
totelian conception of the unity and magnitude of 
the fable. " The fable is called the imitation of one 
entire and perfect action, whose parts are so joined 
and knit together, as nothing in the structure can 
be changed, or taken away, without impairing or 
troubling the whole, of which there is a proportion- 
able magnitude in the members."^ Simplicity, 
then, should be one of tl^e chief characteristics of 
the action, and nothing receives so much of Jonson's 
censure as ^^ monstrous and forced action.'^ ^ As to 
the unity of time, Jonson says that the action should 
be allowed to grow until necessity demands a con- 
clusion ; the argument, however, should not exceed 
the compass of one day, but should be large enough 
to allow place for digressions and episodes, which 
are to the fable what furniture is to a house.^ 
1 Discoveries, p. 83. ^ Works, i. 337. ^ Discoveries, p. 85. 



292 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ENGLAND [chap. 

Jonson does not formally require the observance of 
the unity of place, and even acknowledges having 
disregarded it in his own plays; but he does not 
favor much change of scene on the stage. In the 
prologue of Volpone, he boasts that he has followed 
all the laws of refined comedy, 

" As best critics have designed ; 
The laws of time, place, persons he observeth, 
From no needful rule he swerveth." 

Milton observes the unity of time in the Samson 
Agonistes : " The circumscription of time, wherein 
the whole drama begins and ends is, according to 
ancient rule and best example, within the space of 
twenty-four hours." 

With the introduction of the French influence, 
the unities became fixed requirements of the Eng- 
lish drama, and remained so for over a century. 
Sir Robert Howard, in the preface of his tragedy, 
The Duke of Lerma, impugned their force and 
authority ; but Dry den, in answering him, pointed 
out that to attack the unities is really to contend 
against Aristotle, Horace, Ben Jonson, and Corneille.* 
Farquhar, however, in his Discourse upon Comedy 
(1702), argued with force and wit against the uni- 
ties of time and place, and scoffed at all the legisla- 
tors of Parnassus, ancient and modern, — Aristotle, 
Horace, Scaliger, Vossius, Heinsius, D'Aubignac, 
and E-apin. 

1 Essay of Dram. Poesy, p. 118. 



III.] DRAMATIC AND HEROIC POETRY 293 

lY. Epic Poetry 

The Elizabetlian theory of heroic poetry may be 
dismissed briefly. Webbe refers to the epic as 
^'that princely part of poetry, wherein are dis- 
played the noble acts and valiant exploits of puissant 
captains, expert soldiers, wise men, with the fa- 
mous reports of ancient times ; '^ ^ and Puttenham 
defines heroic poems as " long histories of the noble 
gests of kings and great princes, intermeddling the 
dealings of gods, demi-gods, and heroes, and weighty 
consequences of peace and war,'' ^ The importance 
of this form of poetry, according to Puttenham, is 
largely historical, in that it sets forth an example 
of the valor and virtue of our forefathers.^ Sidney 
is scarcely more explicit.^ He asserts that heroic 
poetry is the best and noblest of all forms; he 
shows that such characters as Achilles, ^neas, and 
E-inaldo are shining examples for all men's imita- 
tion ; but of the nature or structure of the epic he 
says nothing. 

(The second part of Harington's Apologie of Poe- 
trie is given up to a defence of the Orlando Furioso, 
and here the Aristotelian theory of the epic appears 
for the first time in English criticism. Harington, 
taking the ^neid as the approved model of all 
heroic poetry, first shows that Ariosto has followed 
closely in Virgil's footsteps, but is to be preferred 
even to Virgil in that the latter pays reverence to 
false deities, while Ariosto has the advantage of the 

1 Haslewood, ii. 45. ^ Jhid. p. 54. 

2 Puttenham, p. 40. * Defence, p. CO. 



294 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ENGLAND [chap. 

Christian spirit. But since some critics, " reducing 
all heroical poems unto the method of Homer and 
certain precepts of Aristotle," insist that Ariosto 
is wanting in art, Harington sets out to prove that 
the Orlando Furioso may not only be defended by 
the example of Homer, but that it has even fol- 
lowed very strictly the rules and precepts of Aris- 
totle.^ In the first place, Aristotle says that the 
epic should be based on some historical action, only 
a short part of which, in point of time, should be 
treated by the poet ; so Ariosto takes the story of 
Charlemagne, and does not exceed a year or so in 
the compass of the argument.^ Secondly, Aristotle 
holds that nothing that is utterly incredible should 
be invented by the poet ; and nothing in the Orlando 
exceeds the possibility of belief. Thirdly, epics, 
as well as tragedies, should be full of TrcptTrereta, 
which Harington interprets to mean " an agnition 
of some unlocked for fortune either good or bad, 
and a sudden change thereof " ; and of this, as well 
as of apt similitudes and passions well expressed, 
the Orlando is really full.) 

In conclusion, it may be observed that epic 
poetry did not receive adequate critical treatment 
in England until after the introduction of the 
French influence. The rules and theories of the 
Italian Renaissance, restated in the writings of Le 
Bossu, Mambrun, Rapin, and Vossius, were thus 
brought into English criticism, and found perhaps 

1 Haslewood, ii. 140 sq. 

2 Cf. Minturno, Arte Poetica, p. 71 ; and Ronsard, (Euvres, 
iii. 19. 



III.] DEAI^IATIC AND HEROIC POETRY 295 

their best expression in Addison's essays on Paror 
dise Lost. Such epics as Davenant's Gondibert, 
Chamberlayne's Pharonnida, Dryden's Annus Miror 
bills, and Blackmore's Prince Arthur, like the 
Erench epics of the same period, doubtless owed 
their inspiration to the desire to put into practice 
the classical rules of heroic poetry.^ 

1 Of. Dryden, Discourse on Satire, in Works, xiii. 37. 



CHAPTER ly 

CLASSICAL ELEMENTS IN ELIZABETHAN CRITICISM 

I. Introductory : Romantic Elements 

It were no less than supererogation to adduce 
evidences of the romantic spirit of the age of 
Shakespeare. No period in English literature is 
more distinctly romantic ; and although in England 
criticism is less affected by creative literature, and 
has had less effect upon it, than in France, it is 
only natural to suppose that Elizabethan criticism 
should be as distinctly romantic as the works of 
imagination of which it is presumably an exposi- 
tion. As early as Wilson's Rhetoric we find evi- 
dences of that independence of spirit in questions 
of art which seems typical of the Elizabethan age ; 
and none of the writers of this period exhibits any- 
thing like the predisposition of the French mind to 
submit instinctively to any rule, or set of rules, 
which bears the stamp of authority. From the 
outset the element of nationality colors English 
criticism, and this is especially noticeable in the 
linguistic discussions of the age. At the very time 
when Sidney was writing the Defence of Poesy, 
Spenser's old teacher, Mulcaster, wrote: "I love 
Rome, but London better ; I favor Italy, but Eng- 
296 



CHAP. IV.] CLASSICAL ELEMENTS 297 

land more ; I honor the Latin, but I worship the 
English." ^ It is this spirit which pervades what 
may be called the chief expression of the romantic 
temper in Elizabethan criticism, — Daniel's Defence 
of Rhyme (1603), written in answer to Campion's 
attack on rhyme in the Observations in the Art of 
English Poesy. The central argument of Daniel's 
defence is that the use of rhyme is sanctioned both 
by custom and by nature — " custom that is before 
all law, nature that is above all art." ^ He rebels 
against that conception which would limit 

" Withiii a little plot of Grecian ground 
Tlie sole of mortal things that can avail ; " 

and he shows that each age has its own perfections 
and its own usages. This attempt at historical 
criticism leads him into a defence of the Middle 
Ages ; and he does not hesitate to assert that even 
classical verse had its imperfections and deficien- 
cies. In the minutise of metrical criticism, also, he 
is in opposition to the neo-classic tendencies of the 
next age ; and his favorable opinion of enjambement 
and his unfavorable comments on the heroic 
couplet^ drew from Ben Jonson an answer, never 
published, in which the latter attempted to prove 
that the couplet is the best form of English verse, 
and that all other forms are forced and detestable.'* 

1 Morley, English Writers, ix. 187. 

2 Haslewood, ii. 197. 

3 Ibid. ii. 217. 

4 Jonson, Works, iii. 470. Cf. Gascoigne's comments on en- 
jambement, in Haslewood, ii. 11. 



298 LITERAKY CRITICISM IN ENGLAND [chap. 



II. Classical Metres 

DaniePs Defence of Rhyme may be said to have 
dealt a death-blow to a movement which, for over 
half a century had been a subject of controversy 
among English men of letters., In reading the 
critical works of this period, it is impossible not to 
notice the remarkable amount of attention paid by 
the Elizabethans to the question of classical metres 
in the vernacular. The first organized attempt to 
introduce the classical versification into a modern 
language was, as Daniel himself points out,^ that of 
Claudio Tolomei in 1539. The movement then 
passed into France; and classical metres were 
adopted by Baif in practice, and defended by 
Jacques de la Taille in theory. In England the 
first recorded attempt at the use of quantity in the 
vernacular was that of Thomas Watson, from whose 
unpublished translation of the Odyssey in the 
metre of the original Ascham has cited a single 
distich : — 

" All travellers do gladly report great prayse of Ulysses, 
Eor that lie knew many mens maners, and saw many 
cities. "2 

This was probably written between 1540 and 1550 ; 
toward the close of the preceding century, we are 
told, a certain Mousset had already translated the 
Iliad and the Odyssey into Erench hexameters. 

Ascham was the first critical champion of the 
use of quantity in English verse.^ Ehyme, he says, 

1 Haslewood, ii. 205. 2 ScJiolemaster, p. 73. 

3 Ibid. p. 145 sq. 



IV.] CLASSICAL ELEMENTS 301 

was introduced by the Goths and Hims at a time 
when poetry and learning had ceased to exist in 
Europe ; and Englishmen must choose either to 
imitate these barbarians or to follow the perfect 
Grecians. He acknowledges that the monosyllabic 
character of the English language renders the use 
of the dactyl very difficultj for the hexameter " doth 
rather trot and hobble than run smoothly in our 
English tongue ; '' but he argues that English will 
receive the carmen iambicum as naturally as Greek 
or Latin. He praises Surrey's blank verse rendering 
of the fourth book of the ^neid, but regrets that, 
in disregarding quantity, it falls short of the " per- 
fect and true versifying." An attempt to put 
Ascham's theories into practice was made by 
Thomas Blenerhasset in 1577 ; but the verse of his 
Complaynt of CadwalladeVj though purporting to be 
" a new kind of poetry/' is merely an unrhymed 
Alexandrine.^ 

In 1580, however, five letters which had passed 
between Spenser and Gabriel Harvey appeared in 
print as Three proper, and wittie, familiar Letters and 
Two other very commendable Letters; and from this 
correspondence we learn that an organized move- 
ment to introduce classical metres into English 
had been started. It would seem that for several 
years Harvey had been advocating the use of quan- 
titative verse to several of his friends; but the 
organized movement to which reference has just 

1 Cf. Haslewood, ii. p. xxii. The treatises of Gascoigne 
(1575) and King James VI. (1584) contain no reference to quan- 
titative verse. 



29r LITERARY CRITICISM IN ENGLAND [chap. 

been made seems to have been started .independently 
by Thomas Drant, who died in 1578. Drant had 
devised a set of rules and precepts for English clas- 
sical verse ; and these rules, with certain additions 
and modifications, were adopted by a coterie of 
scholars and courtiers, among them being Sidney, 
Dyer, Greville, and Spenser, who thereupon formed 
a society, the Areopagus,^ independent of Harvey, 
but corresponding with him regularly. This so- 
ciety appears to have been modelled on Baif's 
Academic de Poesie et de Musique, which had 
been founded in 1570 for a similar purpose, and 
which Sidney doubtless became acquainted with 
when at Paris in 1572. 

Prom the correspondence published in 1580, it 
becomes evident that Harvey's and Drant' s systems 
of versification were almost antipodal. According 
to Drant's system, the quantity of English words 
was to be regulated entirely by the laws of Latin 
prosody, — by position, diphthong, and the like. 
Thus, for example, the penult of the word carpenter 
was regarded as long by Drant because followed by 
two consonants. Harvey, who was unacquainted 
with Drant's rules before apprised of them by 
Spenser in the published letters, follows a more 
normal and logical system. To him, accent alone is 
the test of quantity, and the law of position cannot 
make the penult of carpenter or majesty long. 
*^ The Latin is no rule for us," says Harvey ; ^ and 
often where position and diphthong fall together, 

1 Cf. Pulci, Morgante Maggiore, xxv. 117. 
a Haslewood, ii. 280. 



IV.] CLASSICAL ELEMENTS 301 

as in tlie penult of merchaundise, we must pronounce 
the syllable short. In all such matters, the use, 
custom, propriety, or majesty of our speech must be 
accounted the only infallible and sovereign rule of 
rules. 

It was not, then, Harvey^s purpose to Latinize 
our tongue. His intention was apparently two- 
fold, — to abolish rhyme, and to introduce new 
metres into English poetry. Only a few years be- 
fore, Gascoigne had lamented that English verse 
had only one form of metre, the iambic.-^ Harvey, 
in observing merely the English accent, can scarcely 
be said to have introduced quantity into our verse, 
but was simply adapting new metres, such as 
dactyls, trochees, and spondees, to the requirements 
of English poetry. 

Drant's and Harvey's rules therefore constitute 
two opposing systems. According to the former, 
English verse is to be regulated by Latin prosody 
regardless of accent ; according to the latter, by 
accent regardless of Latin prosody. By neither 
system can quantity be successfully attempted in 
English; and a distinguished classical scholar of 
our own day has indicated what is perhaps the only 
method by which this can be accomplished.^ This 
method may be described as the harmonious ob- 
servance of both accent and position ; all accented 
syllables being generally accounted long, and no 
syllable which violates the Latin law of position 

1 Haslewood, ii. 5. 

2 R. Ellis, Poems and Fragments of Catullus translated in 
the original metres, London, 1871, p. xiv. sq. 



302 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ENGLAND [chap. 

being used when a short syllable is required by the 
scansion. These three systems, with more or less 
variation, have been employed throughout English 
literature. Drant's system is followed in the 
quantitative verse of Sidney and Spenser ; Harvey's 
method is that employed by Longfellow in Evange- 
Uiie; and Tennyson's beautiful classical experi- 
ments are practical illustrations of the method of 
Professor Eobinson Ellis. 

In 1582, Eichard Stany hurst published at Ley den 
a translation of the first four books of the ^neid 
into English hexameters. From Ascham he seems 
to have derived his inspiration, and from Harvey 
his metrical system. Like Harvey he refuses to be 
bound by the laws of Latin prosody,^ and follows 
the English accent as much as possible. But in 
one respect his translation is unique. Harvey, in 
his correspondence with Spenser, had suggested 
that the use of quantitative verse in English neces- 
sitated the adoption of a certain uniformity in 
spelling; and the curious orthography of Stany- 
hurst was apparently intended as a serious attempt 
at phonetic reform. Spelling reform had been 
agitated in France for some time; and in Bait's 
Etrennes de Poesie frangoise (1574), we find French 
quantitative verse written according to the phonetic 
system of Eamus. 

Webbe's Discourse of English Poetrie is really a 
plea in favor of quantitative verse. His system is 
based primarily on Latin prosody, but reconciled 
with English usage. The Latin rules are to be fol- 

1 Stauyhurst, p. 11 sq. 



IV.] CLASSICAL ELEMENTS 303 

lowed when the English and Latin words agree; 
but no word is to be used that notoriously impugns 
the laws of Latin prosody, and the spelling of Eng- 
lish words should, when possible, be altered to 
conform to the ancient rules. The difficulty of 
observing the law of position in the middle of Eng- 
lish words may be obviated by change in spelling, 
as in the word mournfully, which should be spelled 
mournfuly; but where this is impossible, the law of 
position is to be observed, despite the English 
accent, as in royalty. Unlike Ascham, Webbe re- 
gards the hexameter as the easiest of all classical 
metres to use in English.^ 

Puttenham is not averse to the use of classical 
metres, but as a conservative he considers all sud- 
den innovations dangerous.^ The system he adopts 
is not unlike Harvey's. Sidney's original enthusi- 
asm for quantitative verse soon abated ; and in the 
Defence of Poesy he points out that although the 
ancient versification is better suited to musical ac- 
companiment than the modern, both systems cause 
delight, and are therefore equally effective and valu- 
able ; and English is more fitted than any other 
language to use both.^ Campion, like Ascham, re- 
gards English polysyllables as too heavy to be used 
as dactyls ; so that only trochaic and iambic verse 
can be suitably employed in English poetry.^ He 
suggests eight new forms of verse. The English 
accent is to be diligently observed, and is to yield 
to nothing save the law of position; hence the 

1 Haslewood, ii. 69. 3 Defence, p. 55. 

2 Puttenham, p. 126 sq. ■* Haslewood, ii. 167. 



304 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ENGLAND [chap. 

second syllable of Trumpington is to be accounted 
long.^ In observing tlie law of position, however, 
the sound, and not the spelling, is to be the test 
of quantity ; thus, love-sick is pronounced love-sik, 
dangerous is pronounced dangerus, and the like.^ 

III. Other Evidences of Classicism 

With Campion's Observations (1602) the history 
of classical metres in England may be said to 
close, until the resuscitation of quantitative verse 
in the present century. Daniel's Defence of Rhyme 
effectually put an end to this innovation; but the 
strong hold which the movement seems to have had 
during the Elizabethan age is interesting evidence 
of the classical tendencies of the period. Ben 
Jonson has usually been regarded as the forerun-^ 
ner of neo-classicism in England; but long before^ 
his influence was felt, classical tendencies may? 
be observed in English criticism. Thus Ascham's 
conservatism and aversion to singularity in mat- 
ters of art are distinctly classical. " He that can 
neither like Aristotle in logic and philosophy, nor 
Tully in rhetoric and eloquence," says Ascham, 
" will from these steps likely enough presume by 
like pride to mount higher to the misliking of 
graver matters ; that is, either in religion to have 
a dissentious head, or in the commonwealth to have 
a factious heart." ^ His insistence that it is no 
slavery to be bound by the laws of art, and the stress 
he lays on perfection of style, are no less classical."* 

1 Haslewood, ii. 186. ^ Scholemaster, p. 93. 

2 Cf. Ellis, op. cit., p. xvi. ^ Ibid. pp. 118, 121. 



IV.] CLASSICAL ELEMENTS 305 

Similar tendencies may be observed in the writers 
that follow Ascham. Harvey's strictures on the 
Faerie Queene were inspired by two influences. As 
a humanist, he looked back with contempt on 
mediaeval literature in general, its superstitions, 
its fairy lore, and the like. As a classicist in art, 
he preferred the regular, or classic, form of the 
epic to the romantic, or irregular form; and his 
strictures may be compared in this respect with 
those of Bembo on the Orlando or those of Salviati 
on the Gerusalemme. So Harington attempts to 
make the Orlando chime with the laws of Aristotle, 
and Sidney attempts to force these laws on the 
English drama. So also Sidney declares that genius, 
without " art, imitation, and exercise," is as noth- 
ing, and censures his contemporaries for neglect- 
ing " artificial rules and imitative patterns." ^ So 
Webbe attempts to find a fixed standard or criterion 
by which to judge good and bad poets, and trans- 
lates Fabricius's summary of the rules of Horace as 
a guide for English poetry.^ 

English criticism, therefore, may be said to ex- 
hibit classical tendencies from its very beginning. 
But it is none the less true that before Ben Jonson 
there was no systematic attempt to force, as it were, 
the classic ideal on English literature. In Spain, 
as has been seen, Juan de la Cueva declared that 
poetry should be classical and imitative, while the 
drama should be romantic and original. Sidney, 
on the contrary, sought to make the drama classi- 
cal, while allowing freedom of imagination and 
1 Defence, p. 46. 2 Haslewood, ii. 19, 85 sq. 

X 



306 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ENGLAND [chap. 

originality of form to the non-dramatic poet. Ben 
^ Jonson was the first complete and consistent Eng- 
lish classicist ; and his classicism differs from that 
of the succeeding age rather in degree than in kind. 
Bacon's assertion that poetry is restrained in 
the measure of words, but in all other points ex- 
tremely licensed/ is characteristic of the Eliza- 
bethan point of view. The early critics allowed 
extreme license in the choice and treatment of 
material, while insisting on strict regularity of 
expression. Thus Sidney may advocate the use 
of classical metres, but this does not prevent him 
from celebrating the freedom of genius and the 
soaring heights of the imagination. There is noth- 
ing of these things in Ben Jonson. He, too, cele- 
brates the nobility and power of poetry, and the 
dignity of the poet's office; but nowhere does he 
speak of the freedom of the imagination or the 
force of genius. Literature for him was not an 
expression of personality, not a creation of the 
imagination, but an image of life, a picture of the 
world. In other words, he effected what may be 
called an objectification of the literary ideal. 

In the second place, this image of life can be 
created only by conscious effort on the part of the 
artist. For the creation of great poetry, genius, 
exercise, imitation, and study are all necessary, 
but to these art must be added to make them per- 
fect, for only art can lead to perfection.^ It is this 
insistence on art as a distinct element, almost as 
an end in itself, that distinguishes Jonson from 
1 Works, vi. 202. 2 Discoveries, p. 78. 



IV.] CLASSICAL ELEMENTS 307 

his predecessors; and nowhere is his ideal of art 
expressed as pithily as in the address to the reader 
prefixed to the Alchemist (1612) : — 

" In Poetry, especially in Plays, . . . the concupiscence 
of dances and of antics so reigneth, as to run away from 
nature, and be afraid of her, is the only point of art that 
tickles the spectators. But how out of purpose, and place, 
do I name art? When the professors are grown so obsti- 
nate contemners of it, and presumers on their own naturals, 
as they are deriders of all diligence that way, and, by sim- 
ple mocking at the terms, when they understand not the 
things, think to get off wittily with their ignorance. Nay, 
they are esteemed the more learned, and sufficient for this, 
by the many, through their excellent vice of judgment. 
For they commend writers as they do fencers or wrestlers ; 
who, if they come in robustiously, and put for it with a 
great deal of violence, are received for the braver fellows ; 
when many times their own rudeness is the cause of their 
disgrace, and a little touch of their adversary gives all that 
boisterous force the foil. I deny not but that these men, 
who always seek to do more than enough, may some time 
happen on some thing that is good and great ; but very 
seldom ; and when it comes it doth not recompense the rest 
of their ill. . . . But I give thee warning, that there is a 
great difference between those that, to gain the opinion of 
copy [i.e. copiousness], utter all they can, however unfitly ; 
and those that use election and a mean i [i.e. selection and 
moderation]. For it is only the disease of the unskilful to 
think rude things greater than polished ; or scattered more 
numerous than composed. ' ' 2 

'Literature, then, aims at presenting an image 
of life through the medium of art; and the guide 

1 Cf. Scaliger, Poet. v. 3, where the highest virtue of a poet 
is said to be electio et sui fastidium ; and vi. 4, where it is said 
that the " life of all excellence lies in measure." 

2 Works, ii. 3 ; cf. Discoveries, pp. 22-27. 



308 LITERARY CRITICISM IN FiVGLAND [chap. 

to art, according to Jonson, is to be found in the 
rules of criticism. Thus, for example, success in 
comedy is to be attained 

" By observation of those comic laws 
Which I, your master, first did teach the age ; " ^ 

and elsewhere, it will be remembered, Jonson boasts 
that he had swerved from no " needful law." But 
though art can find a never-failing guide and moni- 
tor in the rules of criticism, he does not believe 
in mere servile adherence to the practice or theory 
of classical literature. The ancients are to be re- 
garded as guides, not commanders.^ In short, the 
English mind was not yet prepared to accept the 
neo-classic ideal in all its consequences ; and abso- 
lute subservience to ancient authority came only 
with the introduction of the French influence. 

This is, perhaps, best indicated by the history 
of Aristotle's influence in English criticism from 
Ascham to Milton. The first reference to the 
Poetics in England is to be found in Ascham's 
Scholemaster.^ There we are told that Ascham, 
Cheke, and Watson had many pleasant talks to- 
gether at Cambridge, comparing the poetic pre- 
cepts of Aristotle and Horace with the examples 
of Euripides, Sophocles, and Seneca. In Sidney's 
Defence of Poesy, Aristotle is cited several times ; 
and in the drama, his authority is regarded by 
Sidney as almost on a par with that of the " com- 
mon reason." * Harington was not satisfied until he 

1 Works, ill. 297. » Scholemaster, p. 139. 

2 Discoveries, p. 7. ^ Defence, p. 48. 



IV.] CLASSICAL ELEMENTS 3O9 

tad proved that the Orlando agrees substantially 
with Aristotle's requirements. Jonson wrote a 
commentary on Horace's Ars Poetica, with elucidar 
tions from Aristotle, in which 

"All the old Venusine {i.e. Horace], in poetry, 
And lighted by the Stagyrite \i.e. Aristotle] /could spy 
Was there made English ; " i 

but the manuscript was unfortunately destroyed by 
fire in 1623. Yet Jonson was aware how ridiculous 
It IS to make any author a dictator.^ His admira- 
tion for Aristotle was great; but he acknowledges 
that the Aristotelian rules are useless without natu- 
ral talent, and that a poet's liberty cannot be bound 
within the narrow limits prescribed by grammari- 
ans and philosophers.^ At the same time, he 
points out that Aristotle was the first critic, and 
the first of all men to teach the poet how to write. 
The Aristotelian authority is not to be contemned, 
since Aristotle did not invent his rules, but, taking 
the best things from nature and the poets, con- 
verted them into a complete and consistent code of 
art. Milton, also, had a sincere admiration for " that 
sublime art which [is taught] in Aristotle's Poetics, 
m Horace, and the Italian commentaries of Castel- 
vetro, Tasso, Mazzoni, and others." " But despite all 
this, the English independence of spirit never 
failed J and before the French influence we can 

1 Works, iii. 321 ; cf. i. 335, iii. 487. 

2 Discoveries, p. 66. 

3 lUd. p. 78 sq. 

* Works, iii. 473. 



310 LITERARY CRITICISM IN ENGLAND [chap. iv. 

find no such, thing in English criticism as the lit- 
erary dictatorship of Aristotle.^ 

iThe chapter on poetry in Peacham's Compleat Gentleman 
(1622) is interesting chiefly because of its indebtedness to 
Scaliger, who is called by Peacham (p. 91) " the prince of all 
learning and the judge of judgments, the divine Julius Caesar 
Scaliger." This constitutes him a literary arbiter if not dic- 
tator. In the Great Assises holden in Parnassus (1645), Scaliger 
is proclaimed one of the lords of Parnassus, in company with 
Bacon, Sidney, Erasmus, Budaeus, Heinsius, Vossius, Casaubon, 
Mascardi, Pico della Mirandola, Selden, Grotius, and others. 
The star of scholarship in criticism was passing northward; 
for the influence of the Dutch critics on Jonson and others, see 
my Critical Essays of the Seventeenth Century, Oxford, 1908, 
vol. i. pp. xvi-xviii. 



CONCLUSION 

It has been established, I think, that by the 
middle of the sixteenth century a unified body of 
poetic rules and theories had been developed in 
Italy, and then passed into France, England, Spain, 
Germany, Portugal, and Holland, and through Hol- 
land into Scandinavia;^ so that by the beginning 
of the seventeenth century there was a common 
body of Eenaissance doctrine throughout western 
Europe. Each country gave this system a national 
cast of its own, but the form which it received in 
France ultimately triumphed; and modern classi- 
cism therefore represents the supremacy of the 
French phase or version of Eenaissance Aristote- 
lianism. This critical system was first developed 
by the formal treatises on poetics during the Cin- 
quecento, but it is a mistake to consider them as 
merely isolated monuments, or as furnishing the 
only ways in which poets, critics, and scholars 
approached the study of literature. They repre- 
sent, in fact, but one of several critical heirlooms 
which Italy passed on to its foster-child France. 

The humanists, as Professor Vossler has shown,^ 
conceived of the nature of poetry in terms, first of 

1 For the influence of Heinsius and other Dutch critics in 
Sweden, c/. E. Wrangel, Sveriges litterdra forbindelser med 
Holland, sdrdeles under 1600-talet, Lund, 1897. 

2 Poetische Theorien in der italienischen Friihrenaissancey 
Berlin, 1900, p. 88. 

311 



312 CONCLUSION 

theology, then of oratory, and finally of rhetoric 
and philology. This development, while appar- 
ently in the direction of an aesthetic interest in 
literature, was really tending toward an exclusive 
attention to external details, and, as an inevitable 
result of the growth of erudition, toward a losg 
of interest in poetry for itself as a creative art. 
The impassioned defences of poetry by Petrarch, 
Boccaccio, and Coluccio Salutati, in which its vital 
impulse was conceived to be at one with that of 
God himself, were succeeded by calmer studies in 
which poetry was given a place side by side with 
the other humanistic disciplines. "When I say 
letters (litteras),^^ says Ermolao Barbaro, "I mean 
philosophy which is conjoined with eloquence."^ 
" The poet differs in no way from the orator," says 
Tiphernas, echoing Cicero, " except that he is per- 
mitted to roam about more freely, is somewhat 
more restricted in his numbers, and approaches 
more closely to music." ^ So that, while Humanism 
might during its progress emphasize this or that 
side of humanistic culture, it tended more and more 
to concern itself with the whole body of classical 
studies, and to consider them as forming a unity in 
themselves. The studia sapientice and the studia 
eloquentice, at first carefully distinguished from 
each other, tended more and more to merge in 
the single category of studia Utterarum.^ "The 

1 Angeli Politiani Opera, Lugduni, 1539, p. 467. 

2 K. Milliner, Reden unci Briefe italienischer Humanisten^ 
Vienna, 1899, p. 187. 

3 Of. V. Rossi, II Quattrocento, Milan, n.d,, p. 407 sq. (note 
on pp. 2,3). 



CONCLUSION 313 

moderns," Vives justly complained, in h.is De Causis 
Corruptarum Artium, " confound the arts by reason 
of their resemblance, and of two that are very 
much opposed to each other make a single art. 
They call rhetoric grammar, and grammar rhetoric, 
because both treat of language. The poet they call 
orator, and the orator poet, because both put elo- 
quence and harmony into their discourses." ^ 

To this body of secular learning, — massed under 
the general head of Utteroe, or studia Jiumanitatis, or 
eloquentiay or pliilologia, according to the predominat- 
ing interest of the period or the individual taste of 
the writer, — the chief opposition was represented 
by the two great mediaeval survivals, the tradition 
of scholastic training and the tradition of chivalry. 
The defence of letters against the first was under- 
taken by the pedagogic treatises of the fifteenth 
and early sixteenth centuries. All the writers 
on humanistic education — the Italians, Leonardo 
Bruni, ^neas Sylvius Piccolomini, Maffeo Vegio, 
Battista Guarino, Jacopo di Porcia, the Frenchman 
Budseus, the Dutchman Erasmus, the German 
Sturm, the Spaniard Yives, the Englishmen Elyot 
and Ascham — not only explain, but also defend, 
the position of classical literature, and especially 
classical poetry, in the new scheme of teaching. It 
is the charges of paganism and immorality which 
chiefly confront them; and though they advance 
few, if any, original arguments in answering these 

1 Opera, ed. Mayans, Valencia, 1785, vi. 64. For the signifi- 
cance of Vives as a critic, see the Italian translation of this 
book, p. 139, n. 



314 CONCLUSION 

charges, they emphasize the educative and refining 
influence of literary study, and indicate its value as 
nourishment for the young mind. 

Similarly, the tradition of chivalry — the tradi- 
tion of the active life par excellence, which found 
little place for culture — raised the question whether 
or not the study of letters is practically useless to 
the gentleman, whether it conduces to effeminacy, 
whether it unfits him for the martial or courtly 
life. The question was so often debated that 
Castiglione, in the Cortegiano (1528), could say 
that "as this controversy has already been long 
waged by very wise men, there is no need to renew 
it." But few Cinquecento treatises on the courtier, 
on the gentleman, on honor, on manners and 
courtesy, fail to discuss the relative merits of letters 
and arms as accomplishments for perfect manhood ; 
and not a few separate tractates, such as Nifo's 
De Armorum Litterarumque Comparatione and Gia- 
comini Tebalducci Malespini's Delia Nohiltdb delle 
Lettere e delle Armi, are devoted to the same theme. 
The controversy between Muzio, who espoused the 
cause of letters in his II Gentilhuomo, and Mora, 
who espoused that of arms in his II Cavaliere, 
is well known. But the consensus of opinion 
tended wholly in one direction. Castiglione and 
Guazzo might differ as to whether preeminence 
should be accorded to letters or arms, but they 
agreed fundamentally that both are essential to a 
complete man. The argument centred for the 
most part on the question of glory : did letters or 
arms bring the greater fame ? So, in early days, 



CONCLUSION 315 

when chivalry had been confronted by the conflict 
between arms and love, between the reward of 
chivalrous deeds (pi pretz d^armas e de cavallairia), 
on the one hand, and the delights of gallantry (lo 
joy de dompnas e d^amia), on the other,^ it was the 
same question of honor, of glory, which was at 
stake ; it was the same doubt as to the eff eminizing 
effect of love on valor that agitated the chivalric 
mind. But humanism justified culture beyond all 
dispute as a gentle accomplishment. Loys le Boy, 
in his Vicissitude, showed the concurrence of letters 
and arms among all civilized nations ; and William 
Segar, in his Honor Military and Civil, summed up 
the whole discussion by asserting that "the en- 
deavor of a gentleman ought to be either in arms or 
learning, or in them both; and in my own poor 
conceit, hardly deserveth he any title of honor that 
doth not take pleasure in the one or the other." ^ 

The poetics of the Cinquecento thus inherited, 
in theoretical form, a defence of classical poetry 
against the charges of paganism and immorality, 
a defence of the study of letters against the charges 
of effeminacy and practical uselessness, a defence 
of classical literature as an educative and refining 

1 Cf. the tenzone between Sordello and Bertran d'Alaraanon, 
in C. de Lollis, Vita e poesie cli Sordello, Halle, 1896, p. 174. 
The formal treatises on love during the Cinquecento are also not 
without interest for the history of criticism and poetic theory. 
Thus, for example, Equicola, in his Libro di iiatura d' amore, 
discusses at some length the treatment of love in classical, Tus- 
can, French, Proven9al, and Spanish poetry — an early example 
of comparative criticism. 

2 Of. Einstein, Italian Renaissance in England, New York, 
1902, p. 93. 



316 CONCLUSION 

force, a defence of literary study in general, not as 
mere humanistic erudition, but as an accomplish- 
ment of gentlemen and courtiers, as an element in 
general culture. Moreover, the defence of the 
vernacular, tentatively begun in Dante's De Vulgari 
Eloquentia, was carried on to final victory by Bembo 
and his school, and the discussion was continued 
by a host of ardent advocates, such as Varchi and 
Muzio in Italy, Du Bellay and Henri Estienne in 
France, Juan de Valdes in Spain, and Cheke, As- 
cham, and Mulcaster in England. 

Poetic theory had thus far been chiefly nourished 
upon the rhetorical and oratorical treatises of Cicero, 
the moral treatises of Plutarch (especially those 
upon the reading of poets and the education of 
youth), the Institutiones Oratorioe of Quintilian, and 
the De Legendis Gentilium Lihris'^ of Basil the 
Great. To these a vast body of classical criticism 
was added by the sixteenth century. Aldus, in 
1503, published the works of the chief Greek 
rhetoricians. Giulio Cammillo elucidated Hermo- 
genes; Eobortelli, Longinus; and commentaries on 
the Ars Poetica of Horace appeared in great num- 
ber. But the diffusion of Aristotle's Poetics was 
central in developing poetic theory and in furnish- 
ing a standard of judgment in criticism; and the 

1 This work was very popular among the humanists. It was 
translated into Latin by Leonardo Bruni about 1405 {cf. Coluccio 
Salutati, Epistola, in Scelta di Curiosita letterarie, 1867, Ixxx, 
221), and is cited, e.g., by Toscanella (Miillner, op. cit., p. 194) 
and ^neas Sylvius {Opera, Basileae, 1571, p. 083). Vives, as 
late as 1531, seems to rate it higher than Aristotle's Poetics 
{Opera^ vi. 342). 



CONCLUSION 317 

outgrowtli of tlie older humanistic heritage and of 
these new Aristotelian studies was that unified 
body of doctrine which may be summed up in 
the phrase " Eenaissance poetics," The outworn 
criteria of doctrina and eloquentia, by which the 
humanists had tested all literary endeavor, were 
superseded by a thousand new ones, — probability, 
verisimilitude, unity, the fixed norm for each lit- 
erary genre, and the like. Viewed from the stand- 
point of European criticism as a whole — for the 
same transformation was effected, not only in Italy, 
but in all the transalpine countries as well — the 
development may be summed up by saying that the 
ideal of classical imitation was merged into that of 
neo-classical rules. Imitation had been followed 
by theory, and theory by law. 

The immediate problem of criticism was the 
application of this body of poetic theory to the 
body of creative literature, past and present. This 
was largely assisted by the literary controversies 
of the sixteenth century, such as those concerned 
with the Orlando Furioso, the Gerusalemme Liber ata, 
the Orbecche, the Divina Commedia, the Pastor Fido. 
Even the personal polemics of the time — such as 
those of Caro and Castelvetro, Sigonio and Kobor- 
telli, Giraldi Cintio and Pigna, Aretino and Franco, 
Dolce and Ruscelli, Domenichi and Doni — were 
not wholly unfruitful in this respect. Poetic theory 
even entered the field of linguistic controversy, and 
so, for example, Varchi's distinction between the 
versifier and the poet in the Ercolano'^ is combated 
1 B. Varchi, Opere, Trieste, 1859, ii. 150. 



318 CONCLUSION 

by Castelvetro in his answer to Varclii's dialogue.^ 
No field of intellectual interest was untouched by 
it; it enriched the philosophic systems of Telesio, 
Campanella, and Bacon, among many others, and 
these show the century's advance in comparison 
with the paucity or confusion of ideas in regard 
to poetry in the earlier work of a Savonarola or 
a Vives. 

The Italian academies swarmed with lecturers who 
elucidated verses of Petrarch, Bembo, Dante, Ariosto, 
Tasso, and the like ; and though these academic dis- 
courses were for the most part trivial and futile, 
and chiefly concerned with the interpretation of 
external details, yet they could not fail to assist, in 
some measure, the assimilation of poetic theory, 
and, more important still, to foster (let us hope) 
that criticism which has its eyes directly on the 
poet's page. Of these the most characteristic are 
the lezioni (delivered before the Florentine and 
Paduan academies) and the minor treatises of Bene- 
detto Varchi, who is in some respects the repre- 
sentative critic of the mid-Cinquecento. A master 
of poetic theory, he has also ideas of his own on 
the method and scope of criticism itself. In writing 
of critical prolegomena, ^^not only for works of 
philosophers, but of all other writers, both in prose 
and in verse," he discusses seventeen points, some 
absolutely necessary, others merely useful, which 
should be considered in the preliminary interpre- 
tation of any book : the name and the life of the 
author, the title of the book, whether it is legiti- 
1 Varchi, Opere, 1859, ii. 217. 



CONCLUSION 319 

mate or not, its aim, its subject, its instrument, its 
ofl&ce, its utility, its divisions, the order of the 
parts, under what form of philosophy it falls, its 
method of teaching, its proportion, its mode of 
language, and the like.^ These are all concerned 
with externals; all, or nearly all, avoid or ignore 
the consideration of literature on its purely aesthetic 
side. Yet these, after all, are mere preliminaries ; 
with what shall we concern ourselves, when we 
come to the work itself? Varchi tells us, in a 
brief but important fragment, Qualitdi die si ricer- 
cano negli scrittori e negli scritti;^ and these quali- 
ties are four : ethical quality (bontd) and philosophic 
soundness {dottrind), with regard to the content of 
literature ; eloquence (eloquenza) and art (arte), with 
regard to its treatment. Of these, says Varchi, the 
two first are nobler than the two last, since they 
deal with things as the latter do with words; the 
former give literature its instructive value, the 
latter its pleasure. But bontct and dottrina alone 
do not suffice, for the reason that all things are 
composed of form, which is the nobler part, and of 
matter, the less noble; and this form is given to 
literature by art, which in a sense also includes 
eloquence, and which alone tests the genius and 
judgment of a writer. Here, obviously, we are 
listening once more to the old humanistic catch- 
words, doctrina and eloquentia, matter and form, 
words and things, profit and pleasure, — remnants 
of classical phrase or mediaeval jargon; we still feel 
the humanistic pedantry and formalism of the 
1 Varchi, Opere, ii. 806. 2 jj^ici. ii. 813. 



320 CONCLUSION 

Quattrocento, the older scholastic interest in the 
subtleties of definition. 

This may perhaps appear more clearly when we 
consider how Varchi has put his ideas into practice. 
It is a favorite practice of his to use a few verses 
as the text of a philosophic discourse; a sonnet of 
Delia Casa, for example, furnishes the pretext for a 
lecture on jealousy.^ But his- critical method may 
best be illustrated by the eight lectures on the canzoni 
degli occhi of Petrarch, read privately at the Univer- 
sity of Florence during the spring of 1545.^ In the 
first of these he follows in general the method he 
himself had laid down for all preliminary discussion. 
He concerns himself with six points: first, the 
genus to which the three canzoni belong, which, as 
he decides, is that species of rhetoric called ^'de- 
monstrative or laudative; " secondly, the style of the 
poems, which is neither high nor low, but in the 
first bassamente mezzajio, in the second mediocre- 
mente mezzano, in the third altamente mezzano ; 
thirdly, the species or sort of poetry to which they 
belong, which is "lyrical," so called because origi- 
nally intended to be sung to the lyre, "exegetic or 
narrative," because the poet speaks in his own per- 
son, and "mixed," because the versification is in 
part regulated and in part free ; fourthly, their 
subject and aim, the subject being- "natural," or 
concerned with the things of nature, and the 

1 Varchi, Opere, ii. 570. This lezione was translated into 
English in 1615 by Robert Tofte, under the title of The Blazon 
of Jealousie, with interesting marginal illustrations from con- 
temporary English poetry. 

2 Op. cit. ii. 439. 



CONCLUSION 321 

poet's aim is to give praise and fame to Madonna 
Laura; fifthly, their similarities and dissimilarities; 
and, lastly, their structural dependence on one 
another. 

All this scarcely touches the problem of true 
criticism, but in the succeeding lectures Yarchi 
treats of the canzoni at closer range. His method 
is to consider one stanza after another, and to 
discuss its parts minutely. Thus, on the opening 
lines — 

"Perch^ la vita 6 breve, 
E I'ingegno paventa all' alta impresa," etc., — 

after pointing out that the poet here states his 
theme, he proceeds to make such comments as 
these : 

"X(2 vita, i.e. the space of human existence; e breve, 
i.e. short; e Vingegno, i.e. my own; paventa^ fears and 
trembles ; alV alta impresa, i.e. considering the height of 
the subject, and how difficult it is to attempt praise of 
such beautiful eyes." ^ 

Or on the verses — 

" Quel che pensier non pareggia, 
Non che I'agguagli altrui parlar, o mio " — 

he comments : 

" That is, the beautiful eyes of Madonna Laura ; nor could 
a diviner circumlocution be used, nor expressed in lovelier 
words and more suitable terms ; for parlar, which is a verb, 
corresponds with pensier, which is a noun, the present 
subjunctive agguagli with the present indicative pareggia, 
and mio with altrui. All this, we must believe, really indi- 
cates that things must be placed first, then conceits or 
thoughts ... in the third place words or terms . . , 

Y iVarchi, op. cit. ii. 446. 



322 CONCLUSION 

and lastly, writing . . . since things are much truer than 
thoughts, thoughts than words, words than writing." ^ 

It is inconceivable that such puerile interpretation 
could illuminate the text of Petrarch, or advance 
the cause of criticism; but beyond these verbal 
comments and scholastic distinctions Varchi, in 
these Petrarchan discourses, does not attempt to go.^ 
Yet these lectures, it must be remembered, were 
delivered three or four years before the outburst of 
interest in Aristotle's Poetics occasioned by the 
commentaries of Eobortelli (1548) and Maggi (1550) 
and the Italian translation of Segni (1549); they 
antedate his own lectures on the theory of poetry 
by eight years. In order to comprehend clearly 
what the poetics of the Renaissance accomplished 
for criticism in a brief period of time, these lectures 
of 1553 have but to be compared with those of 1545. 
In the treatment of the lyric, the Cinquecento, 
being without the guidance of those definite theories 
and fixed laws which had been elaborated for 
dramatic and epic poetry, lost itself in details and 
pedantries. The old scholastic subtleties still 
follow Varchi in his discourse on "Poetics in Gen- 
eral" and in the five on "Poetry," to which I have 

1 Varchi, op. cit. 11. 448. 

2 The following curious comment on these lezioni, to be 
found in one of Alfonso de' Pazzi's sonnets against Varchi 
(reprinted in the Terzo libro delV opere burlesche, 1760, p. 338), 
is not without some justification : — 

" Le canzoni degli occhi ha letto il Varchi, 
Ed ha cavato al gran Petrarca gli occhi." 

Cf. Graf, Atiraverso il Cinquecento, Turin, 1888, pp. 26, 64. 



CONCLUSION 323 

already given ample attention;^ but a surer touch, 
a new attitude toward his material, indicate that a 
change of some sort had come. In one of these 
lectures, after stating that the Giron Cortese of 
Alamanni pleases him more than the Orlando 
Furioso (and a judgment so astounding must be 
taken into consideration when defining his position 
as a critic), he says : 

" To few, and perhaps to none, is it permitted to affirm: 
This or that man has erred, this or that thing is bad. 
Every one can say, many should indeed say : It seems to me 
that this or that man has erred, this or that thing does not 
seem to me good. It is conceded to every one to say : The 
figures of this or that sculptor or painter do not please me ; 
but to very few indeed is it conceded to affirm: These 
figures are not good." 2 

This, in another form, is the old concept of the 
diversity de gustibus, but it is important as showing 
that theory had as yet not been crystallized into 
dogma. The orthodox neo-classic criticism, having 
transformed into laws the proper pleasure to be 
derived from each literary genre, was shaken by no 
such doubts. But early in the eighteenth century 
Marivaux gave expression to a point of view very 
much akin to that of Yarchi. The critics of his 
day, according to Marivaux, might assert of a work 
of art, "That is worthless, that is detestable;" but 
such reasoning is itself worthless and detestable, 
since a man of taste may say of a book, "It does 
not please me," but "he will never decide that it 
is bad until after he has compared his own ideas 

1 Supra, pp. 25, 34, 41, 50, etc. 

2 Opere, ii. 691. 



324 CONCLUSION 

with those of others."^ Here the doubt as to 
whether the code of poetics can afford the individual 
critic a fixed standard of judgment is a sign that 
the neo-classic structure is beginning to crumble; 
for it is upon the development of this very concept 
that criticism expended its chief effort in the cen- 
tury and three-quarters that separate Varchi from 
Marivaux. 

The development in this respect is indicated in 
a lecture by Torquato Tasso on a sonnet of Delia 
Casa, delivered more than a quarter of a century 
later before the Ferrarese Academy.^ The method 
of Varchi's Petrarchan discourses is here followed, 
in first considering the style in which the sonnet 
is written, and then elucidating its various parts; 
though Varchi's jejune formulae of the high, me- 
diocre, and low styles are superseded by a more 
philosophical discussion of poetic style, based on 
the theories of Hermogenes, Demetrius Phalereus, 
and Cicero, and the puerile verbal exposition of 
Yarchi gives place to a method that is not exclu- 
sively expository, but is based on Tasso's juster 
conception of the function of criticism. At the 
very outset he defines his position by contrasting 
the method of imitation, which judges works of art 
merely by their similarity or dissimilarity to some 
masterpiece in the same kind, and the method of 
art, whose higher function it is 

"to investigate the reasons why this verse seems sweet, this 
one harsh ; this one humble and plebeian, this one noble 

1 G. Larroumet, Marivaux, sa vie et ses ceuvres, Paris, 1894, 
p. 448. 2Xasso, Opere, ed. Rosini, xi. 42 sq. 



CONCLUSION 325 

and magnificent; this one too careless, this one too highly 
colored ; this one cold, this one bombastic, this one insipid ; 
why here the movement and speed of the speech are praised, 
here the slowness and delay; here direct speech, here indi- 
rect ; here the long period, here the short ; and, in a word, 
why compositions please or displease : and having found the 
reasons of all these things, there form in the mind some 
that are universal, true, and infallible, gathered from the 
experience of many particulars ; and it is the knowledge of 
these which Art more properly demands for itself." 

Why works of art please or displease! the univer- 
sal and infallible grounds of our pleasure and dis- 
pleasure ! — here are problems beyond the scope of 
Varchi's tentative and empirical method; here is a 
significant advance over Varchi's assumption of the 
individual basis of the pleasure or displeasure which 
poetry gives. Yet Tasso's own method is a com- 
promise between the two which he defines; the 
method of imitation and that of art are alike 
necessary to the critic. 

Here criticism is beginning to turn eyes upon 
itself, leaping from the two questions which had 
interested it most in the sixteenth century, " What 
is poetry ? " and " What is the meaning of this or 
that poem?^^ to a third question, which it but 
vaguely apprehended : " What is criticism ? " To 
say that this question was first neatly put and defi- 
nitely discussed in the seventeenth century is to 
say that not until then did criticism become a self- 
conscious and organized art; and it is characteristic 
of this change of attitude that, while Horace and 
Vida had written " Arts of Poetry, ^^ it is literally 
an " Essay on Criticism " upon which Pope expended 



326 CONCLUSION 

a kindred poetic skill. Writing some forty years 
after Boileau, he substituted a brief sketch of the 
history of criticism from Aristotle to Eoscommon 
for the rapid survey of French poetry in the Art 
Poetique. 

This new organization of critical method and 
critical theory was developed on the basis of Re- 
naissance poetics. The body of rules and theories 
was the same, but the attitude toward them was 
gradually changing; and the history of this attitude 
gives us the history of criticism in the seventeenth 
and eighteenth centuries. At the beginning of the 
seventeenth century the intellectual ferment in 
Italy and Spain developed new theories of style, 
based on the rhetorical discussions of classical antiq- 
uity and the Renaissance. It was this ferment of 
thought which produced the ideal of " wit " which 
was derived through the French esprit from the 
Italian ingegno. A new terminology was being 
created, indicative of a change of interest from the 
materials of literature to the moods and faculties of 
the creative mind. Words like "fancy," "judg- 
ment," "wit," "humor," "taste," "the sublime," 
were acquiring new meaning and a higher vogue. 
But the rationalism of the classic spirit throttled 
this initial outburst, and it was not till the middle 
of the eighteenth century that the human mind, 
rather than literature itself, was systematically 
studied for the development of principles of criti- 
cism. Tasso, as we have seen, propounded the vital 
problem why poetry is pleasing to the human mind, 
but he attempts to find the answer in poetry itself. 



CONCLUSION 327 

With the growth of the rationalistic spirit the 
main interest of criticism was in fixing a reasonable 
standard of critical judgment. " Criticism, as it 
was first instituted by Aristotle," says Dryden, 
"was meant a standard of judging well; the chief- 
est part of which is to observe those excellences 
which should delight a reasonable reader."^ This 
is no longer Tasso's problem why certain excel- 
lences please; there are in poetry excellences which 
ought to please the reasonable reader. La Bruyere 
goes still farther in asserting that for every reader 
there is one absolute standard of taste : 

" There is a point of perfection in art, as of excellence or 
maturity in nature. He who is sensible of it and loves it has 
perfect taste ; he who is not sensible of it and loves this or 
that else on either side of it has a faulty taste. There is 
then a good and bad taste, and men dispute of tastes not 
without reason." 2 

Dry den's standard of judgment and La Bruyere's 
standard of taste are both the result of the appli- 
cation of reason to aesthetic pleasure. Yet the de- 
velopment of the ideal of taste ^ was dangerous to 
the rigid spirit of classicism. The recognition of 
the subjective basis of taste soon led to a contrast 

1 Works, ed. Scott-Saintsbury, v. 112. 

2 Caracteres, "Des ouvrages de I'esprit." Cf. Shaftesbury, 
Characteristiclcs, London, 1711, ill. 154, 156. 

3 On the early history of the term " taste " cf. Croce, Estetica, 
p. 194 sq. ; Borlnski, Poetik der Renaissance, p. 308 sq. ; 
Baltasar Gracian und die HofaUeratur, p. 39 sq.; and Fari- 
nelli's valuable review of the last in the Revista critica de 
historia y literatura espanolas, vol. ii., 1896. Cf., however, 
Addison, Spectator, No. 409, June 19, 1712, where Gracian's 
priority in the use of the term is accepted. 



328 CONCLUSION 

with those neo-classic rules which constituted the 
external element in art. Pope recognized that taste 
might give a grace beyond the reach of art; the 
concept of the je ne sais quoi^ was formulated, 
to comprehend these elements of aesthetic pleasure 
not explicable by the rules of Eenaissance poetics ; 
and finally, Montesquieu, in his Essai sur le GoUt, 
says that 

"art gives the rules, and taste the exceptions ; taste discovers 
on what occasions art should submit to it, and on what 
occasions it should submit to art." 2 

It is natural to find, side by side with this evo- 
lution, a kindred development of interest in the 
subjective processes of art.^ Montesquieu himself 

1 This phrase had been employed as early as the sixteenth 
century, both in Italy and in France. Tasso uses it, and 
Mile, de Gournay, the Jille d'alliance of Montaigne, speaks of 
"I'amour, qui est je ne S9ai quoy, doit sourdre aussi de je ne 
SQai quoy" (Doncieux, Bouhours, pp. 264, 265). Bouhours 
established its use in criticism in the seventeenth century, and 
was followed in the eighteenth by Marivaux, Montesquieu, 
Feijdo, and a host of others (c/. Croce, Estetica, p. 205 sq. ; 
Larroumet, Marivaux, p. 498 sq.). From the time of Shaftes- 
bury {Characteristicks, i. 147, etc.) it was also naturalized in 
England. 

2 (Euvres completes, Paris, 1834, p. 596. 

3 John Morley {Burke, p. 19) gives to Burke's essay On the 
Sublime and Beautiful the credit of having first established the 
principle " that critics of art seek its principles in the wrong 
place, so long as they limit their search to poems, pictures, 
engravings, statues, and buildings, instead of first arranging 
the sentiments and faculties in man to which art makes its 
appeal;" but this contention, it is scarcely necessary to say, 
ignores a long line of antecedent speculations on the continent 
and even in England. 



CONCLUSION 329 

complains that the ancients regarded as positive 
qualities all the relative qualities of the soul ; the 
Platonic dialogues are absurd, since they deal with 
the good, the beautiful, the agreeable, and the like, 
as positive realities : 

" The sources of the beautiful, the good, the agreeable, etc., 
are in ourselves, and to seek for their reasons is merely to 
seek for the causes of the pleasures of our soul. Let us ex- 
amine then our soul, let us study it in its actions and its 
passions. Poetry, painting, sculpture, architecture, music, 
the dance, in fine, the works of nature and of art, can give 
pleasure to the soul ; let us see why, how, and when they 
do so."i 

The new science of aesthetics was to attempt, and in 
a sense to solve, this new problem; the romantic 
movement was to apply the fruits of those labors to 
literature and to literary criticism. 

The attitude toward the body of Eenaissance 
poetics had thus, during the seventeenth and 
eighteenth centuries, undergone a complete trans- 
formation. In the Eenaissance itself, the human- 
istic period, with its ideal of classical imitation, 
was followed by a period of theorizing along the 
lines of the Aristotelian Poetics, and the results 
were before long hardened into fixed rules and 
dogmas of criticism. The neo-classical period re- 
garded these rules, first from the attitude of ^^wit," 
then of reason, and finally of taste. When Hobbes, ^/ 
in the address prefixed to his translation of the 
Iliad (1675), says that "there be many men called 
critics, and wits, and virtuosi, that are accustomed to 

1 (Euvres completes, p. 587, and note. 



330 CONCLUSION 

censure the poets," ^ he has indicated the three 
classes of litterateurs v,^ho were to carry on these 
three phases of critical activity. 

Imitation, theory, law ; wit, reason, taste, — each 
in its turn became a guiding principle of criticism, 
until with the romantic movement all were super- 
seded by the concept of the creative imagination. 
The first three represent, as it were, the stages 
through which Kenaissance poetics passed in the 
process of complete codification; the last three 
represent the stages of its decline and death. 

1 Spingam, Critical Essays of the Seventeenth Century, Ox- 
ford, 1908, ii. 68; c/. i. p. xc sq. 



APPENDICES 



332 



APPENDIX A 



W 
H 

H 

X 
t— I 
cc 

W 
O 

o 

W 
H 

P^ 
O 

o 

s 

c 
»^ 

g 

o 





Cox: Rhetoric. 
Wilson: Rhetoric, 


5 

fi 


c. 1524 
1553 


1 


Pelletier : trans, of Horace's 

Ars Poetica. 
Sibilet : Art Poitique. 

DuBellay: Defense et Illus- 
tration. 


P 


1545 
1548 
1549 


S 
^ 


Vida : De Arte Poetica. 
Trissino : Poetica, pts. i.-iv. 
Dolce : trans, of Horace's Ars 

Poetica. 
Pazzi: transl. of Aristotle's 

Poetics. 
Daniello : Poetica. 
Tolomei : Versi e Regole della 

Nuova Poesia. 
Eobortelli: ed. of Aristotle's 

Poetics. 
Segni: transl. of Aristotle's 

Poetics. 
Maggi: ed. of Aristotle's 

Poetics. 
Muzio : Arte Poetica. 


ft 


Ill S IS s 2 1 s 



APPENDIX A 



333 









1 

O 




lemaster. 
>tes of Instruc- 

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to Gosson. 
enser : Letters, 
nee of Poesy 

'.ulis and Cau- 


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English 
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APPENDIX B 

SALVIATrS ACCOUNT OF THE COMMENTA- 
TORS ON ARISTOTLE'S "POETICS." 

The following is Lionardo Salviati's account of the 
commentators on Aristotle's Poetics up to 1586. The 
passage is cited from an unpublished Ms. at Florence 
(Cod. Magliabech. ii. ii. II.), beginning at fol. 371. The 
title of the Ms. is Parafrasi e Commento della Poetica 
d'Aristotile ; and at fol. 370 it is dated January 28, 1586. 

DELLl INTERPRETI DI QUESTO LIBRO 
DELLA POETICA 

Averroe primo di tutti quelli interpret! della Poetica 

che a nostri tempi sono pervenuti, fece intorno a esso una 

breve Parafrasi, nella quale come che pure 

alcune buone consideration i si ritrovino, 

tutta via per la diversity e lontananza de costumi, che tra 

greco havea, e tra gli arabi poca notizia havendone, 

pochissima ne pote dare altrui. Appresso hebbe voglia 

Giorgio Valla di tradur questo libro in 

latino, ma o che la copia del testo greco lo 

ingannasse, o che verso di se f usse 1' opera malagevole per 

ogni guisa massimamente in quel tempi, egli di quella 

impresa picciola lode si guadagno. II che considerando 

. poi Alessandro de Pazzi, huomo delle lingue 

intendente, et ingegnoso molto, aUa mede- 

sima cura si diede, et ci lascio la latina traduzzione, che 

3ti4 



APPENDIX B 335 

in tutti i latini comenti fuorch' in quelle del Vettorio 

si leggie. E per cio che dotto huomo era, et hebbe 

copia di ottimi testi scritti a penna, diede non poca luce 

a questa opera, e piii anche fatto havrebbe se da la morte 

stato non f usse sopravenuto. Ma Francesco Rubertello a 

_, „. tempi nostri, nelli studi delle linerue esercita- 
Robortelh. ^. ^ -, l j- . 

tissimo, conoscendo cne di maggior aviso 

li faceva mestieri, non solamente purgo il testo di molte 
macchie che accecato il tenevano, ma il primo fu ancora, 
che con distese dichiarationi, et con innumerabili esempli 
di poeti greci e latini, fece opera di illus- 
trarlo. VulgarizzoUo appresso Bernardo 
Segni in questo nostro Idioma, et con alcune sue brevi 
annotationi lo diede in luce. E nella tradutione per 
alcune proprie voci che ai greci vocaboli ottimamente cor- 
risposero, non se n' usci anche egli senza commendazione. 
Ma con molto maggior grido et applauso, il comento del 
. Maggio, chiarissimo filosopho, fu dal mondo 
ricevuto ; percioche havendo egli con somma 
gloria nella continua lettura della Philosophia i suoi anni 
trapassati, con 1' ordine principalmente giovo a questo 
libro, e col mostrarne la continuatione et in non pochi 
luoghi soccorse il Rubertello. E se si fusse alquanto 
meno ardente contro di lui dimonstrato, ne cosi vago 
stato fusse di contrapporseli, sarebbe alcuna volta per 
awentura uscito f uor piii libero il parer suo, e piii saldo. A 
lato a quel del Maggio fu la latina traduzione et comento 
di Pier Vettori pubblicato, il quale essendo 
oltre ad ogni altro, delle antiche scritture 
diligentissimo osservatore, e nella cognitione delle lingue 
havendosi si come io stimo a tempi nostri, il primo luogo 
guadagnato, hauta commodity, et in gran numero di 
preziosi et antichi esemplarj scritti a mano, in ogni parte, 
ma nella correzzione del testo spetialmente e nella tra- 
duzione, ha fatto si che poco piu avanti pare che di lume a 



336 APPENDIX B 



questo libro possa desiderarsi. Fu non di manco a 
Castelvetro 



questi anni di nuovo da un dotto huomo in 



questa lingua volgarizzato et esposto, et piu 
a lungo che alcun altro che cio habbia fin qui adoprato 
ancor mai. Questo sava da me per tutto ovunque mi con- 
venga norainarlo, il comento vulgare appellate, e per piii 
brevita con quelle due prime lettere C. V. in questa guisa 
lo notero. Nel qual comento hanno senza alcun fallo di 
sottilissimi avvedimenti, ma potrebb' essere, si come io 
credo, piii sincero. Percio che io stimo, che dove egli dal 
vero si diparte, il faccia per emulazione per lo piii per 
dimostrarsi di sottil sentimento e per non dire come li 
altri. E la costui tradutione, fuorche in alcune parti 
dove egli secondo che io avviso volontariamente erra, tra 
le toscane la migiiore. E sono le sue parole et in essa e 
nell' espositione molto pure, et in puro volgare fiorentino, 
quanto comporta la materia V una e V altra e dettata. 
Ultimamente la traduzzione, e con essa V annotazione di 
. . MgT. Alessandro Piccolomini sono uscite in 

stampa, il quale havendosi con molte altre 

sue opere d' astrologia e di filosofia e di rettorica parte com- 

poste, parte volgarizzate, non picciol nome e molta ripu- 

tazione acquistata, creder si pub altrettanto doverli della 

presente faticha av venire. Dietro a si chiari interpreti 

non per emulatione, la quale tra me e si fatti huomini 

„ , . . non potrebbe haver luogo, ma per vaghezza 
Salviati. , .^ , . ,. ° ' ^ . . 

che 10 pure havrei di dover ancor lo, se lo 

potessi a questa impresa, alcun aiuto arrecare dopo lo 

studio di dieci anni che io ci ho spesi, scendo, quantunque 

timido, in questo campo, piii con accesa volontk, che con 

speranza, o vigore desideroso che avanti che venirmi gloria 

per false opinioni, sieno i miei difetti discretamente da 

savio giudice gastigati. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

This bibliography includes a list of the principal 
books and editions used in the preparation of the es- 
say, and should be consulted for the full titles of works 
cited in the text and in the foot-notes. 

'-— ' I. SOURCES 

Ascham, R. The Scholemaster, edited by E. Arber. Lon- 
don, 1870. 
The Whole Works, edited by Rev. Dr. Giles. 3 vols. 

in 4 p^rts. London, 1864. 
Aubignao( Abbe oT' La Pratique du Theatre. 2 vols. 

Amsterdam, 1715. 
Bacon, F. Works, edited by J. Spedding, R. L. Ellis, 

and D. D. Heath. 15 vols. Boston, 1863. 
Batteux, C. Les Quatres Poetiques d'Aristote, d' Horace, 

de Vida, de Despreaux. Paris, 1771. 
Berni, F. Rime, Poesie Latine, e Lettere, per cura di P. 

Virgili. Firenze, 1885. 
Boccaccio, G. Geneologia degli Dei, trad, per G. Betussi. 

Vinegia, 1547. 
Vita di Dante, per cura di F. Macrl-Leone. Firenze, 

1888. 
Bruno, G. Opere, raccolte da A. Wagner. 2 vols. Lipsia, 

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337 



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INDEX 



Abu-Baschar, 16. 

Academie de Poesie et de Mu- 

sique, 224, 300. 
Accademia della Crusca, 123. 
Accademia della Nuova Poesia, 

222, 224. 
Addison, 295. 
^scbylus, 96. 
Agricola, 132. 

Agrippa, Cornelius, 7, 273, 275. 
Alamanni, Luigi, 222. 
Alberti, Leon Battista, 221. 
Alexander of Aphrodisias, 78. 
Ambrose of Milan, 7. 
Aneau, Bartbelemy, 182 sq. 
Apbthonius, 27. 
Aquinas, Thomas, 6, 15. 
Areopagus, 300. 
Aretino, 106, 163. 
Ariosto, 109, 112 ,sq., 115 sq., 

123, 162, 222, 293 sq. 
Aristophanes, 11. 
Aristotle, passim, especially 16 

sq., 136 sq., 164 sq., 183 sq., 

308 sq. ; Poetics, passim ; 

Rhetoric, 86. 
Ascham , 254 sq . , 283 sq . , 298 sq., 

302 sq. ; Scholemaster, 254. 
Aubignac, Abbe d', 210, 223, 

236, 245 sq. ; Pratique du 

Theatre, 210, 245. 
Averroes, 16, 24, 26. 

Bacon, Francis, 276 sq., 306; 

Advancement of Learning, 

276. 
Bacon, Roger, 16. 
Baif, J. A. de, 224 sq., 298, 300. 



Baldini, Ars Poetica Aristotelis, 

140. 
Balzac, Guez de, 139, 239 sq. 
Bartas, Salluste du, 130, 161, 

197, 227, 230. 
Beaubreuil, Jean de, 208. 
Bellay, Joachim du, 172 sq., 

182 sq., 199 sq., 210 sq. ; De- 
fense et Illustration, 172, 

177 sq. 
Bembo, 117, 126, 153, 161, 180, 

255, 305. 
Beni, Paolo, 36, 92, 123, 140, 244. 
Bernays, 80. 
Berni, Dialogo contra i Poeti, 

9, 153. 
Beza, 230. 
Binet, 192, 219. 
Blackmore, 295. 
Blenerhasset, Thomas, 299. 
Boccaccio, 8, 13, 16, 35, 165, 193, 

261 ; Be Genealogia Deorum, 

9. 
Boccalini, Ragguagli di Par- 

naso, 258. 
Boileau, 39, 48, 108, 130 sq., 

153, 208 sq., 245 sq., 286; Art 

Po^tique, 108, 249. 
Bossuet, 7, 238. 
Bouteauville, Michel de, 223. 
Breitinger, H., 90. 
Brunetiere, 93, 176. 
Bruni, Lionardo, 10, 12; De 

Studiis et Literis, 10. 
Bruno, Giordano, 165 sq. 
Buchanan, 230. 
Budffius, 173, 310 n. 
Bullokar,.256. 



345 



346 



INDEX 



Buonamici, Discorsi Poetici, 

140, 167. 
Butcher, S. H., 26 n., 40, 64, 75. 

Calcagnini, 162 sq. 
Cammillo, Giulio, 32, 176. 
Campanella, 26 sq. 
Campion, Observations in the 

Art of English Poesy, 297, 

304. 
Capriano, 83, 87, 120; Delia 

Vera Poetica, 42, 211. 
Caro, Annibal, 222. 
Cascales, 146. 
Castelvetro, 44 sq., 55, 97 sq., et 

passim. 
Castiglione, 103, 161, 180. 
Cavalcanti, 127. 
Cecchi, 106. 

Cervantes, 36, 104, 258 n., 290 n. 
Chamberlayne, 295, 
Chapelain, 139, 186, 210, 239 sq. 
Cheke, Sir John, 254, 308. 
Chretien Le Gouais, 264. 
Cicero, 16, 30, 54, 104, 164, 178. 
Coleridge, 54, 56, 142. 
Corneille, 75, 84, 90, 101, 139, 

206, 210, 229, 245. 
Council of Trent, 15, 130, 142, 

160, 224, 268, 292. 
Coxe, Leonard, 254. 
Cueva, Juan de la, 146, 233, 

305; Egemplar Portico, 146, 

234. 

Dacier, 63, 70, 75. 

Daniel, Defence of Rhyme, 257, 

297 sg., 304. 
Daniello, 20, 28, 48, 61, 82, 137, 

196. 
Dante, 8, 16, 51, 66, 109, 138, 

I'msq. 
Dati, Leonardo, 221. 
Davenant, 259, 295. 
Deimier, 216. 
Denores, 151. 



Descartes, 249, 

Deschamps, Eustache, 174. 

Desportes, 237. 

Diomedes, 64 sq. 

Dolce, Lodovico, 126 171, 196. 

Dolet, 173, 227. 

Donatus, 104. 

Drant, Thomas, 171, 300 sq. 

Dryden, 53, 75, 100, 142, 231, 

259, 295, 310. 
Duval, 227. 
Dyer, 300. 

Ellis, Robinson, 301 sq. 
Equicola, 58, 127. 
Erasmus, 173, 184. 
Espinel, 171. 

Estienne, Henri, 181, 217. 
Euanthius-Donatus, 65. 
Euripides, 284, 308. 

Fabri, Pierre, 174 sq. 
Fabricius, 147, 305. 
Fanucci, 127. 
Farquhar, 292. 
Fichte, 157. 
Ficino, 160. 
Filelfo, 32, 136. 
Fioretti, Benedetto, 167. 
Fleur de Rh^torique, 174. 
Fontaine, Charles, 181 sq. 
Fracastoro, 22, 31 sq., 40 5g., 

141, 157, 258; Naugenus, 

31. 
Fulgentius, 7, 8. 

Gabrielli, Trifone, 138. 
Gambara, De Perfecta Poeseos 

Ratione, 161. 
Garnier, 230. 
Gascoigne, 256, 301. 
Gelli, 106, 163. 
Giraldi Cintio, 49, 62, 67, 76, 83, 

91, 110 sq., 123. 138, 146, 162, 

211, 235, 28i. 
Goldoni, 167. 



INDEX 



347 



Gosson, 7, 266 sq., 273. 

Gracien du Pont, 174 sq. 

Great Assises holden in Par- 
nassus, 258, 310 n. 

Gregory the Great, 8. 

Greville, Fulke, 300. 

Grevin, 201 sq., 228, 232. 

Grynseus, 1^4. 

Guarini, Pastor Fido, 164. 

Guarino, De Ordine Docendi, 
10. 

Hardy, Alexandre, 232, 235 sq. 
Harington, 275, 293, 305, 308; 

Apologie of Poetrie, 257, 275, 

293. 
Harvey, Gabriel, 117, 255, 299 sq., 

303 sq. 

Heinsius, Daniel, 147, 185, 245, 
292; De Tragmdix Constitu- 
tione, 245. 

Heliodorus, 36, 196. 

Hermann, 16. 

Hermogenes, 32; Idea, 32. 

Hilary of Poitiers, 7. 

Hobbes, 103 n., 259. *. :. ; 

Homer, 4, 6, 18, et passim. ' " 

Horace, 11, 16, et passim; Ars 
Poetica, passim, 

Howard, Sir Robert, 292. 

Isidore of Seville, 5, 11, 65. 

James VI. of Scotland, 262. 

Jodelle, 173, 206. 

Johannes Januensis de Balbis, 

66. 
John of Salisbury, 11. 
Johnson, Samuel, 79, 260. 
Jonson, Ben, 54, 88 sq., 104, 142, 

246, 258, 278 sq., 288 sq., 297, 

304 sg. 

La Bruyere, 241, 248. 

Lamartine, 48. 

La Mesnardiere, 245. 



Landi, Ortensio, 164, 165 ; Para- 

dossi, 164. 
Lasca, II, 104, 106, 163. 
Laudun, Pierre de, 188, 204, 221, 

233; Art Poetique, 20S. 
Le Bossu, 246, 294. 
Lemoyne, 244. 
Leo X., 126, 154, 160. 
Le Roy, 227. 

Lessing, 75, 79, 142, 147, 310. 
Lionardi, Alessandro, 43, 127. 
Livy, 29, 37. 
Lodge, Defence of Poetry, Mu- 

sick, and Stage Plays, 267. 
Lombardi, 138. 
Longfellow, 302. 
Lucan, 195, 275. 
Lucian, 35. 
Lucretius, 45. 
Luisino, 138. 
Luther, 147 n. 

Macrobius, 244. 

Maggi, 27, 49, 63, 78, 93, et 

passim. 
Mairet, 210. 
Malherbe, 216, 220, 231, 236 sq. ; 

Commentaire sur Desportes, 

237. 
Mambrun, 244, 246, 294. 
Mantinus of Tortosa, 16. 
Mantuan, 9. 
Maranta, 108, 146. 
Marguerite de Navarre, 227. 
Marino, 241. 
Marot, 175, 216, 238. 
Mascardi, 310 n. 
Maximus of Tyre, 6. 
Mazzoni, Jacopo, 309; Difesa 

di Dante, 124 n. 
Melanchthon, 132, 254. 
Mellin de Saint-Gelais, 175, 

206. 
Menage, 241. 
Metastasio, 167. 
Michele, A., 36. 



348 



INDEX 



-Milton, 54, 70 n., 80 sq., 142, 

147, 280, 287, 292, 308 sq. 
Minturno, 21, 52, 269, et passim; 

Arte Poetica, 119 ; De Poeta, 

21. 
Mirandola, Pico della, 160, 310 n. 
Moliere, 217. 
Montaigne, 173, 194, 226 sq., 

240. 
Montchrestien, 230. 
Montemayor, 196. 
Morel, Guillaume, 184. 
Mousset, 223, 298. 
Mulcaster, 296. 
Musseus, 88. 
Muzio, 38, 58, 87, 104, 129, 144, 

161, 213 ; Arte Poetica, 50. 

Nisieli, Udeno, v. Fioretti, 

Benedetto. 
Nores, J. de, v. Denores. 

Ogier, Fran9oi8, 235. 

Opitz, Buch von der deutschen 

Poeterei, 147. 
Ovid, 179, 263. 

Palingenius, 39. 

Partenio, 127, 134, 141, 147; 

Delia Imitatione Poetica, 128. 
Pasquier, 223 n. 
Patrizzi, 165 5^., 222; Della 

Poetica, 165. 
Pazzi, Alessandro de', 17, 137, 

314. 
Peacham, Compleat Gentleman, 

310 n. 
Pellegrino, Camillo, 122 sq. 
Pelletier, 171, 175, 182, 191, 

199 sq., 205, 211, 217, 225. 
Petrarch, 8, 16, 58, 138, 261. 
Philo Judaeus, 7. 
Pibrac, Guy du Faur de, 225. 
Piccolomini, ^S^neas Sylvius, 12. 
Piccolomini, Alessandro, 139sg., 

244. 



Pierre Ber9uire, 264. 

Pigna, G. B., 115 sq., 123, 235, 

284. 
Pinciano, 146. 
Pindar, 211. 

Pisani, Marquise de, 241. 
Plato, 4 sq., 14, 78, et passim, 

especially 156 sq. 
Plautus, 85, 102, 285, 291. 
Plutarch, 27, 42, 114. 
Poliziano, 13 sq., 188; Sylvse, 

13. 
Pomponazzi, 137. 
Pontano, G., 103 n., 146 n., 153. 
Pontano, P., 146 n. 
Pontanus, J., 146 n., 147. 
Pope, Alexander, 260, 310; 

Essay on Criticism, 108. 
Prynne, 7. 
Puttenham, 264 sq., 284, 293; 

Arte of English Poesie, 256, 

264.; 

Quintil Horatian, 181 sq., 

216 sq. 
Quintilian, 16, 54, 132, 164. 

Racan, 237. 

Racine, 75, 139, 238, 245. 
Rambouillet, Marquise de, 241. 
Ramus, 137, 164, 223 sq., 227. 
Rapin, 75, 106, 245, 292, 294 ; 

Reflexions sur I'Art Po^tique, 

139. 
Regolo, 108. 
Rengifo, 145. 
Rhetores GrsBci, 17. 
Rhodiginus, 136. 
Ricci, B., 138. 
Riccoboni, 140, 146, 244. 
Richelieu, 209 sq. 
Robortelli, 17, 25, 29 sq., 63, 77, 

91, 103, 139, 244. 
Ronsard, 54, 147, 173, 187 sq., 

206, 211, 218 sq., 226 sq., 231, 

256. 



nroEx 



349 



Rucellai, 136. 
Ruscelli, 58, 127. 

Sackville, Gorboduc, 284, 290. 
Saint- Amant, 244. 
Sainte-Beuve, 152. 
Salviati, Lionardo, 88 sq., 123 

sq., 139 n., 140, 162, 181, 305, 

314, 316. 
Sanchez, Alfonso, 234. 
Sannazaro, 35, 153 160, 179, 234. 
Savonarola, 6, 13 sq., 24, 27, 

130, 160. 
Scaliger, Joseph Justus, 245. 
Scaliger, Julius Caesar, 14, 

36 sq., 43, 58, 131 sq., 310 7i., 

et passim; Poetics, 150, 176, 

et passim. 
Schelandre, J. de, 235. 
Schelling, 157. 
Schlegel, 157. 
Schosser, Disputationes de 

Tragcedia, 147 n. 
Scudery, 244. 
Segni, A., 42 n. 
Segni, B., 17, 92, 139. 
Selden, 310 n. 
Seneca, 62, 69, 85, 201, 232, 

284 sq., 308. 
Shaftesbury, 54. 
Shakespeare, 46, 56, 79, 104 sg., 

205, 296. 
Shelley, 12, 54, 128, 142, 147, 188, 

192, 310. 
Sibilet, 174 sq., 223; Art Po- 

^tique, 175. • ,, 

Sidney, Sir Philip; 34, 51, 104, 

142, et passim; Defence of 

Poesy, 268 sq., et passim. 
Silius Italicus, 195. 
Simonides, 42. 
Sophocles, 62, 284, 308. 
Spenser, 117, 161, 296, 299, 302, 

305. 
Speroni, Sperone, 75, 81, 116 sq., 

242. 



Stanyhurst, Richard, 302. 
Strabo, 24, 27, 47, 54, 193. 
Sturm, John, 132, 254. 
Suckling, Session of the Poets, 

258. 
Suetonius, De Poetis, 65. 
Summo, Faustino, 36, 167. 
Surrey, 299. 
Sjrmonds, J. A., 257. 

Taille, Jacques de la, 223 sq., 
298. 

Taille, Jean de la, 185 sq., 
201 sq., 290; Art de Trag^- 
die, 201, 206. 

Tasso, Bernardo, 17, 22, 55, 119. 

Tasso, Torquato, 8, 34, 37, 56, 
117, 119 sq., 128, 130, 139, 151, 
192, 309; Discorsi delV Arte 
Poetica, 119, 213; Apologia, 
123. 

Tempo, Antonio di, 174. 

Tennyson, 302. 

Terence, 85, 106, 287, 291. 

Tertullian, 5. 

Theocritus, 179. 

Theophrastus, 64 sq. 

TibuUus, 179. 

Tolomei, Claudio, 126, 161, 222, 
256, 298. 

Tomitano, 43. 

Toscanella, 108. 

Tottel's Miscellany, 255. 

Trincaveli, 137. 

Trissino, 58,92 sq., 102, 106, 112, 
126, 136, 176, 206, 288; Po- 
etica, 76, 92, 109, 140, 150. 

Turnebus, 184. 

Twining, 80. 

Valla, Giorgio, 17. 

Varchi, 27, 34, 41, 50, 124 n., 

138, 141, 150, 161, 180. 
Vauquelin de la Fresnaye, 48, 

176 sq., 186, 196, 203, 207, 212, 

219, 227 sq. 



350 



INDEX 



Vega, Lope de, 233 sq., 258 n. 
Vettori, 37 n., 77, 97, 139. 
Vida, 13, 87, 106, 126 sq., 131 sq., 

148, 160, 183, 187, 215, 218, 244, 

247. 
Viperano, 146 n., 188, 204. 
Virgil, 18, 30, 87, 106, et passim. 
Voltaire, 95. 
Vossius, 185, 244 sg., 292, 294, 

310 n. 

Warton, Joseph, 143. 
Warton, Thomas, 254. 



Watson, Thomas, 298, 308. 

Webbe, William, 268, 284, 293, 
302, 305 ; Discourse of Eng- 
lish Poetrie, 256, 263, 283. 

Wilson, Rhetoric, 254, 261, 
296. 

Wither, 258. 

Woodberry, G. E., 12 n. 

Xenophon, 30, 275. 

Zabarella, 26 sq. 
Zapata, 171. 



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